


Excelsior

by powerandpathos



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, F/F, Fluff, Homophobia, Ice Skating, Lesbian Character, M/M, Post-Season/Series 01, Sex, novel-length, pair skating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 00:23:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 77,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8555404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: Yuuri wanted the reporters to leave knowing one thing: That he had found Viktor in a way that they had not; that Viktor was his in the same way that he was not theirs: utterly, entirely, completely.
Yuuri has won the Grand Prix, which was everything he thought he wanted. But for Yuuri, an end to skating could mean an end with Viktor, and when two female skaters approach them with an offer that could make them or break them, they are put to the test more than ever. Can they rise higher than they already have?Update (27/02): I'm taking a very small hiatus from this fic and from all others, as I have a dissertation due at university in March. This fic is not abandoned, and will be updated as soon as I have completed my university work in March, if not before.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a novel-length, multi-chapter work for Yuri on Ice. 
> 
> Note: I'm neither a figure skater, nor have I had any experience with the sport, but I've been trying to do as much research as possible, so please forgive me any technical errors! If you'd like to talk about the fic or Yuri on Ice or anything else, you can find me on my Tumblr: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/ 
> 
> Please enjoy, and I'd be so grateful for a kudos or comment if you do~!

_It’s funny,_ Yuuri thought. _I never thought I’d actually_ win _._

It was a thought that, really, he should not have been allowed to have. It was a thought that he should not have indulged in while the cameras swept in on his face and the flashes of white light burst like lilies blooming too fast. It was a thought that distracted from the colours and the red-white flags and the sound of his name on strangers’ lips. It was a thought, and Viktor was looking at him like he could hear it.

 _I always had faith in you_ , Viktor’s look said, while they were jostled by reporters and fans to the conference room. There were hands on him; someone pressed a sports drink into his grasp. Everything was built of noise and lights and Yuuri could feel his legs still shaking.

It was about the only thing he could feel; the only thing, other than Viktor’s body at his back, the medal around his throat, that he felt was real.

He was guided behind the long table in the conference room, microphones and cameras set up, all pointed at him. Everything looking at him.

 _I don’t want this,_ he wanted to say. _I do—I do but I just want katsudon and a bath in Hasetsu and I want…_

His eyes wandered to Viktor, adjusting his coat as he sat beside Yuuri. His eyes wandered there too often. And, too often, Viktor was meeting his.

‘Okay?’ he said.

And Yuuri had to nod. Couldn’t say, now, that he wasn’t sure what he was feeling and it was okay and better than okay and not okay. A year of training. A year of eating lean meats and brown rice and vegetables his mother over-salted with soy sauce. A year of 5 a.m. starts on the rink and sleeping before the sun had set. A year of Viktor. Had it been a year?

‘How does it feel to have won the Grand Prix Final today, Yuuri?’

Yuuri blinked. The voice came through in moments, in snatches like the old wireless radios his dad liked to work on. Viktor, he realised, was looking at him. His eyes were so open. He was smiling. He was so open to him.

And he laughed, turning away from Yuuri. ‘I think Yuuri’s in shock,’ he told the reporter. He had his interview voice on: the affable Russian; the charmer that hinted at something cold and dangerous but never quite broke through the genial smile. The suggestion of possibility gave Viktor a power over them.

Yuuri didn’t mind him speaking for him then; Viktor slid through the questions in a way he never had, his voice choked and stuck in his throat and his cheeks felt hot to the touch. The cameras picked up his flushed skin so well.

Viktor said, ‘I expect feeling like the Grand Prix to Yuuri feels like this.’

He put his arm around Yuuri’s shoulders, squeezed tight, and the cameras flashed on cue.

‘I couldn’t have—I couldn’t have done it without you,’ he managed to say. He was supposed to look at the reporters when he answered, or even into the cameras. He couldn’t look anywhere but at him.

‘You’re… intensely personal in interviews,’ Viktor had told him once, after the Cup of China. When they were out of the fans’ gazes and the more watchful eyes of the cameras.

‘I’m sorry,’ Yuuri had said. ‘I just want them to get it. I want them to understand how I feel.’

‘Don’t apologise, Yuuri,’ Viktor told him, and he’d run a gloved thumb across the arch of Yuuri’s cheekbone. ‘I suppose I’m being jealous.’

Viktor was looking at him now, a flush on his cheeks. His eyes were bright. ‘Yuuri—’

‘I couldn’t have done it without Viktor,’ Yuuri said now, and he turned towards the cameras and the outstretched microphones. _Flash._ ‘I couldn’t have done it without Phichit and Yuri and skaters like Jean-Jacques and Minami who supported me even when we’re rivals. Or without my parents and my sister and the people of Hasetsu. This win was more than me.’

‘Don’t underplay yourself,’ Viktor told him, quiet laughter in his voice. Yuuri wondered if anyone else would hear it, or if it was just for him. He hoped it was his. ‘You win the Grand Prix and you’re still modest.’

He said this to Yuuri, but mostly to the audience as well. They laughed, because he was laughing. But he kept glancing at Yuuri like he was saying, _I know. I know what you mean. But they won’t._

Viktor pointed at another reporter, and they leaned forward as if summoned, dictaphone in hand.

They asked, ‘How will you celebrate your win over the next few days, Yuuri?’

 _Celebrate,_ Yuuri thought.

Viktor was not looking at him, and Yuuri wondered if that was on purpose. He tugged on the collar of his costume, and cleared his throat.

‘Probably just… sleep?’ he said.

Viktor pressed a hand to his mouth. Yuuri flushed. He picked up the glass of water on the table and took a deep swallow. He settled it down with a quiet _clink_ and a trembling hand _._

‘And eat food that I want to,’ he continued. ‘My—my mum makes the best _katsudon_.’

‘This year is different than last year,’ Viktor supplemented for him. ‘Yuuri’s performance today has been phenomenal. To ascend from sixth place in last year’s competition to first place with a score that has surpassed even some of my own performances… Yuuri is endlessly inspiring. I think he deserves his rest more than anyone.’

The reporters and the skaters in the audience were smiling, because Viktor spoke to them like he was telling them a secret. Yuuri would have been jealous had he not known that Viktor did not sound like this when he was telling his secrets.

 _I know what they are,_ he wanted to tell the people. The nameless, faceless people in front of them. _I know them all._ He wanted to fling it into their faces, with all the reckless abandon that his shaking limbs could manage, skin cooling with sweat. He wanted to whisper it into their ears until they sat shivering with the honesty of it—until Yuuri’s truth seeped and settled into them with no amount of uncertainty. Until they were raw with it and left here knowing one thing: not that Yuuri had won. Not that Yuuri had succeeded. Not that he had defied his darker self, almost prepared, after last year, for some kind of self-immolation. But that he had found Viktor in a way that they had not; that Viktor was his in the same way that he was not theirs: utterly, entirely, completely.

And Viktor had made him complete. He had met him where he was, and taken no more or less than Yuuri had given.

 _I couldn’t have done it without you,_ he had said, moments ago, the words still sitting on his lips. And it was an honesty that he couldn’t bear.

Because the question, inevitably, came. ‘What’s next for you, Yuuri?’ the reporter asked. ‘We heard rumours that this would be your last competition. Do you have plans to stay in Japan, Viktor?’

And things went quiet. And dark. And Yuuri’s shaking had stopped and gone numb because he had been skating his routine until his heart was breaking out of his chest: and every beat told him that he was closer and closer to the end. Closer to the _end._ And his heart knew that it had to keep going—had to _keep_ _going_ —but he feared more that, after this, it would so easily stop.

‘Yuuri?’ Viktor said, prompting him for the second time. There was a small line between his brows. His smile was little more than a curved line. Yuuri couldn’t stand to look at it.

‘I have no plans at the moment,’ he said. The words were too quiet but the microphones picked them up. The men and women sitting in front of him leaned forwards, chairs creaking. ‘I have good stamina but I don’t know if I could…’ Yuuri shrugged, and he looked down at his hands clasped in his lap, knuckles bruised slightly and rough from the cold weather, the awkward landings and the hard bracings. ‘I’m not Viktor. I couldn’t do five more years like he did. But nothing’s certain yet.’

His words met a slight pause. They were too uncertain, but so was Yuuri.

 _Don’t promise them anything,_ Viktor would tell him. _They’ll take what you give otherwise and more._

‘And you, Viktor?’ the reporter said again. Their eyes and their questions were open and receptive. They didn’t know what they were asking.

_Viktor’s biggest enemy is boredom. He only thinks of himself._

‘Viktor—’

‘Japan has been my home for a year now,’ Viktor said, cutting Yuuri off. His hand slipped across into Yuuri’s lap, prying his hand apart, fingers lacing into his own. ‘If Yuuri will have me, I’d like to stay a little longer. He still owes me my coaching fees,’ he added jokingly. ‘And perhaps we might find another rising star in Kyushu to coach.’

His smile, when he finished, cameras snapping, was a winning thing.

 _It’s not fair,_ Yuuri wanted to tell him. _You can smile too easily. You want to do this now?_

Yuuri didn’t feel like smiling now. His heart was blooming in him, feeling like it was growing bigger like a balloon, stretching through the frame of his ribcage, ready to burst. Because Viktor had not told him this.

No—that wasn’t fair, either. Rather: Neither of them had _discussed_ it. It had been a thing that was looming and dark and trembling around them, imminent and endlessly persistent. Not to be discussed during training. Not to be discussed when Viktor, some nights, slipped into his room and fell warm against him. Not to be discussed when there was a Grand Prix to win, because all that could come after. So it slipped behind them and waited, waited, waited.

And now Viktor wanted to reveal this to a panel and an audience and thousands others sitting behind their screens and watching Yuuri think of something to say. Anything to say. Anything at all.

‘Or not,’ Viktor said. Low laughter. His hand was pulling away.

‘I… Think there is a lot ahead of us,’ said Yuuri, locking their fingers together. His voice sounded tight and choked. ‘If we can encounter those things together then I’d be happy.’

_There. I can be diplomatic._

The press seemed to smile as a collective at that answer. Viktor, too. But the thing with knowing him and his secrets was knowing when he was telling the truth. This smile was not the truth.

The questions continued. Less personal, now. They were technical and asked if he was happy with his performance (‘Well, Yuuri won, didn’t he?’) and if the routine was a challenge (‘Of course.’) and how did the Free Skate compare with the Short and _what was Viktor like as a coach_?

And Yuuri said, ‘Phenomenal. He was—he was everything.’

And it didn’t last long after that because Viktor said that Yuuri needed rest and they had a dinner to attend with the athletes in the evening and the Gala Exhibition the next day and then finally— _finally_ —they could go home.

Yuuri had stayed away from Japan for five years until last year, and now suddenly watching videos in bed with Viktor, Makkachin stretched out across the legs, seemed like the only thing he wanted to do. He didn’t think this what it was supposed to be like to win.

‘It’s the shock,’ Viktor told him that night, tying Yuuri’s bow tie in their hotel room, standing so close that Yuuri could see the shock of blue eyes through a brush of white-grey lashes. ‘I remember when I first won and—and…’

‘You expected it,’ Yuuri said. He could picture the smile Viktor had worn well. Eighteen and glued to the screen in his college room in Detroit, snow falling heavy and thick outside. Classes had been cancelled for the last week before Christmas break. The smile Viktor wore had been a deeply satisfied thing. An arrogant thing, almost. A knowing thing. Yuuri had fallen a little bit in love with that smile—with the idea that he might get to wear it one day. With the idea that Viktor might, one day, look at him that way. ‘You were… blasé.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Viktor, mulling the word over, fingers deft at Yuuri’s throat. ‘But you’re you, and I’m me. So it’s okay.’

Yuuri replayed the words in his head through the dinner, when he had to smile and congratulate the skaters. He had to endure Yuri’s snide looks—‘He hates me.’ ‘He’ll get over it.’—and Phichit’s enduring kindness and Jean-Jacques’ assured conviviality and Viktor. He had to endure Viktor.

 _I think there is a lot ahead of us_ , Yuuri had told him, desperate to say something and now thinking it had probably meant nothing. What did that even _mean_? And it seemed that Viktor, for once, was wondering it too. Because Yuuri did not miss the stray glances cast his way; he did not miss the moments of strange, thoughtful silences that passed across Viktor’s face. He did not miss that when he performed at the Gala, at what was supposed to be relaxed and celebratory, Viktor’s eyes watched him in a way that said he was seeing something different than he had done before.

Perhaps, Yuuri wondered, this was the first time Viktor had felt much uncertainty. Had been so sure of his victories in the World Championships and the Grand Prix’s. He had been certain, most of the time, that Yuuri would gain a victory in this year’s Grand Prix, and he had gained it. He had been certain of Yuuri in a way that Yuuri had not been able to feel, and had been lifted by, and now it seemed he was not, in fact, so certain of Yuuri at all. And Yuuri wondered through the Gala and the dinner and the moments before he fell asleep in his hotel room where that left _him_.

They left Barcelona, eventually. A bittersweet parting with the other skaters, some of whom Yuuri knew he might very well not see again. Yuri’s look was begrudging and his ‘Congratulations’ was more so, and Phichit gave him a hug that was tight and promising to see him soon. None of them spoke about him and Viktor.

From Barcelona, they flew to Kumamoto, stopping in Paris and Tokyo, and from there it was a one-hour journey in a silent taxi while Viktor slept with his head against the window and Yuuri watched the chilled December landscape blur past with tired eyes.

His mother welcomed them at 3 a.m. in her dressing gown with tea and reheated _katsudon_ and white rice. There was tofu in broth and a pot of _nabemono_ with beef and vegetables that Viktor finished off with a sated smile full of gratitude, and they picked at small morsels of Okinawan stir-fry.

After, Yuuri followed Viktor up the stairs to their bedrooms, fingers trailing on the railing. And when they reached the top, they stopped. Stared at each other.

The hallway was dark but dim orange light spilled up the stairs, and Yuuri could make out the intensity of Viktor’s gaze too well.

‘Would you like to sleep alone?’ Viktor said, quiet, but suddenly sounding too awake.

Yuuri swallowed. He wasn’t sure he wanted a cold bed right now. He wasn’t sure if he would sleep at all knowing Viktor was in the next room when he could be with him. Not now. Not after everything. The thought of things going back to the way they were before Viktor, before his silver hair and his pellucid eyes and his easy smile and his obliviousness and his sharpness and his unbearable _kindness_ sometimes—the thought terrified him.

It settled deep in the pit of his stomach. A nausea gripping him tight. He was reminded too suddenly of darkened, stifling rooms and an earth mound and ice rising up to meet him. He couldn’t go back to being the person that drifted through that; someone that Viktor looked at in an airport and didn’t recognise. The possibility—the realness of it was choking.

Slowly, he shook his head. ‘I don’t want to be alone,’ he said. Viktor was staring at him. ‘I don’t want you not to be with me. I don’t—I don’t—’

‘Yuuri…’

‘I don’t want you to leave,’ Yuuri continued, feeling and knowing what he should have said in the interview and knowing he couldn’t. Not really. And he felt the words spilling from him, and maybe he should have waited, but was there a better time? Was there a better time than standing in shadows at the top of the stairs of his parents’ inn at four in the morning, blanketed by winter? ‘I want you to stay. I want you to not leave. Or… No. I’m more selfish than that: I don’t want you to leave _me_. I don’t want to be without you and—’

‘Yuuri—’

‘—and I can’t accept that we’ve been together for a year and that it just comes to an end suddenly. I can’t. I can’t accept that we can’t be more than that. That you don’t mean more to me than that. You’re more than my coach. You’re—you’re more than my _friend_. And I took you from them and I don’t want to give you _back_ and—’

It was not the first time Viktor had broken him off with a kiss, and Yuuri felt in it the promise of not being the last. Viktor’s kisses left him with the breathless moment of forgetting who he was. And he searched for that feeling. Not because he wanted to leave who he was, but because he wanted more to find out who Viktor was. And Viktor’s tongue was sliding past his lips, and his hair was knotted in Viktor’s fists, and rising up onto his toes, hands wrapping around his broad shoulders, felt like the perfect way to search for him.

Viktor kissed like he was losing himself in Yuuri, pressed in and reached for something that Yuuri hoped so much that he could give. He was made of hard pressures, lips and his hands and a push of his chest against Yuuri’s that was unyielding.

Yuuri felt his heels knock into the wall, his back flat against the wooden panels, and still Viktor was searching for more. A hand warm on Yuuri’s face and another pressing into the flesh of his waist like he was a Bernini and could leave his mark on skin that wasn’t marble. Skin that yielded too much. A mouth that yielded and let him in and let Viktor’s hardness press up against him and it was all he could do not to choke. Not to cry out. Sound muffled into Viktor’s mouth.

 _I won’t leave you,_ this kiss said, tugging and pulling at him like he was a stringed marionette. And Yuuri went with the motions so willingly. Reached up to meet him. Felt Viktor shaking against him and making the quietest sounds at the back of his throat that Yuuri felt undo him.

 _Even if I have this for now_ , Yuuri thought, _I’ll be happier than anything else. Even if it’s just for now. He’s here, and that’s all that matters. That has to be enough._

Viktor shifted against him, and they groaned quietly into each other, gasping for air when Viktor finally parted.

‘No,’ Yuuri whimpered, reaching up, fingers threading through Viktor’s hair. _Don’t leave._

Viktor’s lips were the colour of new bruises, and the flush across the bridge of his nose made something twist low in Yuuri. Lucid eyes swallowed up by his pupils, glassy and reflecting the orange light creeping up the staircase. His breath was warm; Yuuri wanted to taste it again.

‘Tonight,’ Yuuri whispered. Realising, now, that he had won the Grand Prix because he had won Viktor, and they felt like the same thing. ‘ _Tonight_.’

 _How will you celebrate your win?_ the reporter had asked.

But Viktor, now, shook his head. His lips were curving, his look dark. ‘Soon,’ he said. And then: ‘We’ve been travelling all day. You’re not falling asleep on me.’

Yuuri let his head fall onto Viktor’s shoulder, hands locking at his lower back. Suddenly, he ached. Suddenly, he wanted everything that Viktor had promised and more. He wouldn’t sleep, he knew. He would stay open and willing and ready to take it all. He was burning with it. He wanted to cry with the possibility of it all that was, phenomenally, just out of reach.

Because he could feel Viktor’s touches, his silken, charged words, the press of his body at his back, the breath at his ear, the kisses, when they had come, that were euphoric and stealing like a lover slipping in under the cover of night.

And now—Viktor wouldn’t give it to him. Now he was being _restrained_. And Yuuri couldn’t hate how much he wanted him not to be, when everything was swallowed up by it.

‘We should go to bed,’ Viktor whispered, a quiet suggestion. ‘We’ll wake the guests up.’

‘We should,’ said Yuuri, but he wanted their kisses to turn into something else more. He wanted the hand beneath his shirt, on his waist, to slide across his stomach, and to fall lower. He wanted Viktor to grip him like had only a few times before, tight and gentle at the same time in a way that made him crazed. He wanted Viktor’s mouth on him, everywhere. He wanted to touch Viktor’s skin in a way that he had only, really, been allowed to think about.

 _After,_ Viktor had said. Always _after._ Not because he had the integrity to keep their relationship professional, but because he didn’t want Yuuri _distracted_. Didn’t want anything to get in the way of his success. Didn’t want him to have to deal with the media fanfare that would erupt if it got out.

And now it was after. And Viktor was still saying the same thing, but with different words. And Yuuri was too drunk on tiredness and the suggestion of sex and the headiness it promised to be content with that.

But Viktor’s look was firm, and amused in that beguiling way of his that said he knew so much more than Yuuri could—about everything; about himself—and Yuuri could do nothing to stop it.

‘Whose?’ Viktor said.

And Yuuri said, ‘Yours,’ knowing that Viktor was asking which room, and knowing that he was asking something else too. ‘Yours.’


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: I have changed the rating from Mature to Explicit because of sexual content in later chapters.
> 
> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

**| Yuuri |**

This feeling, Yuuri was coming to understand, was boredom. Listlessness.

It had been two days since he returned; his mother had thrown him a celebration party at the inn, and most of the town had attended, crammed into its old wooden walls. His sister smoked more than usual, and seemed no more amenable than usual. His father didn’t talk much because he didn’t understand, except he was, apparently, ‘So proud.’ And Yuuri didn’t exactly know what his father was meant to be proud of. His parents’ life was the inn. Yuuri was also their life, but Yuuri’s life was skating, and they could not quite understand that they could all be mutually exclusive.

Yuuri had, for a long while now, given up on trying to explain things to them.

‘I reached a personal best today.’

‘Oh, that’s nice, Yuuri!’

‘I’ve been selected for the World Championships.’

‘Well done, Yuuri!’

What they did know was that competitive figure skating was short-lived. It was a brief hobby to indulge in before adulthood began—a spark of abandon. And Yuuri also knew that they were waiting, quietly, for the moment that it came to its inevitable end. Because then he could run the inn, and their life could be his, and his life would be the inn. Their dream would have been fulfilled, but it couldn’t make them understand that _his_ dream would not have.

Nothing had changed, and yet Yuuri had. It was jarring to be at home and have home, for once, not look back at you as the thing you thought you had been seeing.

‘Was it like this for you?’ Yuuri asked.

And Viktor had said, ‘Well. No. Because suddenly I had you.’

Something sparked in him at the words, at the possibility that he had made Viktor stop feeling like he was now, but it didn’t actually make him feel any better.

On the second day, the local newspaper, _Hasetsu Shinbun_ , asked if he’d let them interview him. Hasetsu had a population of ten thousand people, and the readership was smaller. It was not quite the interviews over Skype and over the phone that he had done for Sky and the _Japan Times._

‘Don’t be a snob,’ his sister said; he’d pulled a face when the representative from the paper wandered off.

‘I’m not being a snob,’ said Yuuri, muttering the words as he tapped the time of the interview in his phone. It felt good to have coloured dots on his event calendar again. The rest was an expanse of empty white.

‘You are,’ Mari said, polishing glasses from behind the bar. She had a cigarette dangling from her lips. ‘Just because you’re big shit now, don’t start looking down on this place. These are your roots. These people are _proud_ of you.’

Yuuri frowned at her, sitting across from her on a bar stool. ‘You’re the one who used to say that you couldn’t wait to get out of a hick town that had no ambition.’

‘I never said that.’

‘You did. Those were your exact words.’

‘Yeah, maybe when I was fifteen. Before I grew up.’

Yuuri raised his eyebrows at her—the smoke creeping from her mouth, the heavy-lidded eyes, the hair nested on the top of her head. Yuuri thought about the smart suits Viktor wore, the clean shape of his nails, the styled hair.

 _Is this what grown up looks like?_ he thought, looking at her carefully.      

‘That’s a snob look,’ she said, pointing a finger at him. ‘You’re getting too much like Viktor.’

Yuuri’s eyes grew wide. ‘Viktor is _not_ a _snob_ ,’ he said, words loud, cutting though the tinny Christmas music playing through the speakers. His voice raised heads around him, the usual smattering of tourists and the old men and women who came up from the town to play _shogi_ and drink beer and _happoshu_.

She shrugged, and snubbed out her cigarette in an over-filled ashtray on the bar.

‘He has never looked down on Hasetsu,’ Yuuri said. ‘Not once. He loves this place.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Because it’s _quaint_ and a little _backward._ ’

He stared at her. ‘It’s traditional. And that’s exactly why every other tourist comes here. That’s how you’ve been marketing this place for Mum and Dad online. Don’t make him out to be something else, Mari.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m just saying. This isn’t somewhere someone like _him_ is going to settle. And I don’t think it’s where you are.’

‘Someone like him,’ Yuuri said. ‘Are you using this place as some kind of analogy for _me_?’

 _Are you saying what I’ve always thought? That he will bore of this place like he’ll bore of me?_ He couldn’t expect Viktor to want to live in Hasetsu indefinitely. He couldn’t expect Japan to be enough for him, but he was terrified that it might be possible that _he_ wouldn’t be enough for him. Someone like Viktor, with his insatiability for _movement_ , this lithe creature who needed to be entertained and loved.

There was a reason he had skated longer than people usually did: namely, because he could not imagine a life where he was not. And there was a reason it had come to an end: because the surprise and the reaction to him was fading; because skating, perhaps, had become repetitive.

 _I’m the only one who can satisfy Viktor,_ he’d thought once, with a kind of hopeful desperation that it might be confirmed somehow. And now he was a star, risen and peaked—and falling a slow, quiet descent.

‘I’m saying that you’ve been here two days and the only time you smile is when you’re with him. I’m saying you’re happy when you’re skating. And you’re not skating.’ She put a glass down, her weight pressed into her hands on the bar. ‘You’re not happy, Yuuri. You _won_ and… You’re not happy.’

‘I’ve been home two days,’ he told her, peeling the label off a bottle of apple juice. ‘You don’t know what I am.’

Her smile was small, and did not reach her eyes. ‘You’re my little brother, Yuuri. Sometimes I know.’

‘I know that you’re criticising me for being unhappy here and then telling me I’m not happy. I’m not sure what you’re trying to call that.’

Mari made a sound of irritation, the kind she made when she needed another cigarette, fingernails biting into the wood of the bar. ‘I just think—I think that Viktor found you so quickly after his last competition. You need the focus he has. You need something to focus _on._ You get too sad easily otherwise. And then Mum and Dad get sad and—’

She broke off. Looked away.

 _Don’t say that,_ he wanted to say. _Don’t say that about them or me_. But he knew it was true. There was a reason he had spent five years away from home. There was a _reason_ he hadn’t called as much as he should and there was a _reason_ that home didn’t feel like home right now. And it was a little outstanding that Mari—brusque, aggravating, often rude _Mari—_ could be the one to see it.

‘Don’t tread on eggshells around them, Yuuri,’ she said, softer this time. ‘If you want them to be happy—if you want to be happy, then you need to keep doing what you love. You need to do what you want. I know I damned well do.’

She lit another cigarette, and wandered down to the end of the bar to deal with a customer. Yuuri sat there, and said nothing, and let his mind swim. He hadn’t had anyone tell him that he could do what he wanted. He hadn’t had anyone tell him that it was _okay._

He watched his sister; her accent thickened when she spoke to the locals and gave them their beer and their _sakana_ and their cigarettes. They liked how brusque she was. They liked how unapologetic she was. And it meant that her truths were _truer_ and harder in a way that others’ tended not to be _._

 _Be yourself,_ they’d say, but not, as Mari did: _Be yourself no matter what._

 

* * *

 

The next day, he had the interview in the office of _Hasetsu Shinbun_ ’s chief of staff, a man who reminded Yuuri of his dad: portly, softly jovial, and not a little oblivious. Hasetsu born and bred. He bowed and shook Yuuri’s hand too many times—and then did the same to Viktor—but thankfully the interviewer was a young woman.

Her name was Ando Rina. She was not much older than Yuuri, dark hair cut short around a round face, and knew something of the sport that her questions weren’t embarrassingly representative of Hasetsu. She also didn’t linger too much on the style of his costume.

They spoke in Japanese, because her English wasn’t good—she seemed to think it was sweet when Yuuri translated for Viktor—and Yuuri, just a little bit, liked this. That his answers were untempered and that he didn’t have Viktor so closely listening. Not that he didn’t want Viktor’s opinion, or his guidance, but he thought that sometimes Viktor must have thought he was a bit of an idiot.      

‘How does it feel to represent Japan for this event?’ Ando asked. ‘Do you feel more connected to Hasetsu because of it?’

 _Interesting,_ Yuuri thought, mind drifting back to the conversation he had had with his sister.

‘Of course it feels good to represent my country,’ Yuuri said. The freedom of speaking in Japanese felt like weightlessness. His words did not get caught or trip over themselves, and he felt like he was saying, for once, everything that he meant. ‘But I think it’s… difficult when people don’t really understand your achievements? My parents don’t really understand, and that’s hard.’

He translated for Viktor, whose expression was solemn in the way that it turned whenever Yuuri talked about his parents.

‘And—it’s not that I’m not grateful,’ he hastened to add. The paper would be on every doorstep of the town come the morning, and Yuuri’s face would be splayed across it, surrounded by the stories about someone’s missing cat or the restoration works on the Castle. ‘They’ve always supported me. They’ve always let me pursue this. But it’s not—it’s not like it is for Viktor, I think.’

Viktor’s gaze flickered to him at the sound of his name. Yuuri translated, and he nodded.

‘If I may?’ said Viktor, in English. Yuuri translated for him. ‘I think partly the reason Yuuri is so modest is because skating isn’t really—normalised here. It’s niche. That’s not how the ISU sees Japan, of course. Or how someone might view things in Kyoto or Tokyo. But there’s… isolation here. And I think it reflects on Yuuri’s own reaction to his abilities.’ His gaze turned dark, and heated. ‘I can only imagine what sort of person—what sort of skater you’d be if you were from somewhere that _knew_ what you had achieved.’

‘Like you do,’ said Yuuri, forgetting, for a moment, himself.

‘Like I do.’

A moment passed. The small office felt warm. Though the gasps in the blinds, Yuuri could see the depths of the morning snow that had settled overnight, thick and glittering like crystals as the sun crept in its steady ascent. Everything was hushed and muted, and Yuuri felt like for a moment he had sunk into a little pocket of hot-cold white space, too startlingly bright, that belonged only to him and Viktor.

‘ _So_ ,’ Ando continued, a long, drawn-out word. Her look was lingering on the both of them. ‘Katsuki-san. You said after the Grand Prix that you didn’t know what you wanted to do. Has some time at home made things clearer for you at all?’

‘It’s only been a few days,’ Yuuri said carefully.

‘A few days and a virtually new environment outside the sphere of competition.’

Yuuri swallowed. Her look was focused, and he knew why: if she got an answer, the ten thousand townspeople or Hasetsu would be the first to learn of Yuuri’s figure skating plans. Not Sky or the national paper _Asahi Shimbun_ or the ISU.

Yuuri said, ‘I want more than the Grand Prix. It was too fleeting. It didn’t last long enough.’

She didn’t blink. Viktor, beside him, was oblivious.

‘You want to continue skating competitively?’

‘I… I don’t know. If I wanted to, the World Championships or the Four Continents or… I’d have the opportunity.’

‘Why wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘What’s holding you back?’

And Yuuri fell something sink in his stomach. Because he looked at Viktor. And Viktor was staring at him, waiting for him to explain, and he couldn’t know what was being said. His look was too much honesty for Yuuri right now.

‘This has been the best year in skating I’ve ever had,’ Yuuri said, drawing his eyes back to the woman. ‘It might be that I’ve reached my peak.’

‘Wasn’t that the same with Viktor?’ she asked, looking at Yuuri, like Viktor wasn’t sitting there with them. ‘Didn’t he continue to surpass himself when no one thought he could?’

‘He surpassed himself,’ Yuuri said, so aware of the way that Viktor’s eyes were on him. ‘And he _surpassed_ himself. He… He grew bored, I think. He had given everything, and so no one expected anything anymore.’

‘And you think the same might happen to you?’

 _Happen to me,_ he thought. _Yes, I think it could happen to me. And not in the way that you’re asking._

‘I don’t know. It’s possible. And then if I don’t skate, what—what then?’

‘You could coach or choreograph or join national sports committees.’

‘Be surrounded by skating but not in it?’ That would kill him, so slowly. To watch other people succeed while he fell behind. But then—what had all of this been to Viktor? What had it been like, for him, to watch Yuuri improve so continuously while he only faded? Maybe it hadn’t bothered Viktor at all—bright, optimistic Viktor. Maybe he had seen in Yuuri something that was worth it. Maybe coaching was his way of improving in a different way.

Did Viktor think he was going to fall in love when he did?

Ando considered his words. ‘There are other options. You have a degree from Wayne State in the USA, don’t you? You can do anything. Figure skaters have all sorts of careers.’

Yuuri wanted to shake his head. He couldn’t accept it—he couldn’t imagine doing anything other than this.

‘It doesn’t have to be the end,’ Minako had told him, the last time he’d seen her. ‘Just because you don’t compete, that doesn’t make you any less of a skater. It doesn’t mean you’re not as _good_ , Yuuri.’

‘I just want to do _something_ ,’ Yuuri said. ‘Maybe I should be—be philanthropic and say I want to do _good_ , but my sister told me that the best way to make other people happy is by ensuring that you’re happy, too.’

‘That’s very sage of her,’ the reporter said. She had a quirk to her eyebrow that said she knew exactly what sort of person Mari was, and how remarkable it was that any sort of advice like that could come from her. Yuuri didn’t blame that look; he’d assumed it of his sister too.

 

* * *

 

‘What did you tell her?’

They walked slowly together back to the inn. This time of year, the sky either startling blue or snow-filled white—which, somewhere in between, Yuuri thought was the colour of Viktor’s eyes—the air was biting, and the _onsen_ was always full, and they passed people on their way to the hot springs who nodded and smiled at them both. It made Yuuri happy to see it doing well—happy for his parents—even if most of the people that used it were from Hasetsu.

The paths were icy and gritty, and Viktor kept his hand wrapped around Yuuri’s waist to fit in his coat pocket.

‘Stability,’ Viktor had said, blithely. Like they didn’t skate on ice with blades on their feet.

‘She was asking what I wanted to do next,’ said Yuuri, now. The interview ended shortly after that question, and she’d shaken their hands, Viktor bewildered and confused. Yuuri wasn’t being fair, using language against him, but he was scared.

‘And you said you were retiring?’

‘I—No. That’s not what I said.’

Viktor glanced at him. ‘I thought that’s what we agreed.’

‘No, that’s what you assumed these past few days.’

‘Yuuri—’

‘I want to skate, Viktor,’ Yuuri said, coming to a stop on the quiet path leading through the town. Viktor’s hand slipped away from him; they were suddenly facing each other, cloudy bursts of cold air mingling and fading away.

Viktor folded his arms. Yuuri shoved his hands in his coat pockets.

‘Not competing doesn’t mean not skating,’ Viktor said.

‘I know that.’

Viktor stared at him. ‘I told you not to make promises to the media like that. They won’t like you for it.’

 _Of course,_ Yuuri thought. _Because the version you gave them was_ always _the real one, wasn’t it?_

‘You think I’ll change my mind.’

‘I think you _should.’_

Yuuri looked away, head shaking. ‘You said you’d support me.’

Viktor made a choked sound. ‘ _Yuuri_ —Supporting isn’t—Supporting you doesn’t mean just saying yes to whatever the hell you want to do.’

Yuuri barely held back the roll of his eyes, the spark of anger that flared so rarely inside him. They were both of them shivering from the cold, shaking lightly as they looked at each other. ‘Why are you so _against_ this, Viktor? Is it—Are you scared I’ll somehow surpass you? Is it the coaching? Was it too much?’

_Was I too much?_

‘You don’t understand,’ Viktor said.

‘Understand what?’

Viktor gave him a long, flat look. He said, ‘Is this really about you and about skating, Yuuri?’

‘What—’

‘Or is this about me?’

‘What are you—’

‘Is this about you thinking I’ll lose interest? Is this about what the papers say? Fickle and restless and, oh, what did they say? _Insatiable_? I liked that one—’

‘Viktor—’

‘No, Yuuri,’ Viktor said, hard. ‘You need to stop. You need to stop thinking that you’re not worthy or that I’m so—so _crude_ that I only want you when you’re going to be worth something to me. Do you know how that makes me feel like?’

‘Viktor,’ Yuuri whispered.

‘I’m an opportunist but I’m not heartless, Yuuri. And the opportunity I took was you. I put everything into you. And I—I didn’t expect what that would be like. I didn’t expect how you’d make me _feel_. I didn’t expect that I could feel this _much_ for someone and I don’t want you to think that it’s not valid or real.’

‘I don’t think it’s not real.’

‘Then what’s this all about? Are you testing me? Are you… I don’t understand.’

‘You skated for five years longer than I have. You know what it’s like not to stop. What’s wrong with me wanting to keep going?’

Viktor was frowning. ‘There’s nothing _wrong_ , Yuuri. I just—I want you to be doing this for the right reasons. Don’t do it so you can hold onto me for a reason that you—you really don’t need to.’ He paused. And a quiet laughter built up from him, the softest thing Yuuri thought he’d ever heard from him. ‘Yuuri, you have my _heart._ You don’t need to try and hold onto me when you’ve already got me. And—and I won’t let you go, either. I’m sorry but I won’t.’  

‘You refuse.’

‘Yes, I refuse and—Why are you looking at me like that?’

 _Looking like what?_ He wanted to ask him. But he knew what he was feeling, and so he knew what must have been showing. Yuuri didn’t think it was possible to fall in love with someone so many times, each time like the first.

‘Would you coach me?’ Yuuri said, throat tight.

‘You know I would.’

‘Then I think we’re arguing for nothing.’

Viktor made a quiet sound. ‘We’re not arguing, Yuuri. I know you’re _inexperienced_ but this isn’t _arguing_.’

And Yuuri felt something in him give, and fall out. That moment of halcyon warmth despite the cold had vanished.

‘Ah,’ he said, soft. ‘That was...’ And then felt the way his face twisted, something unpleasant on his tongue. Couldn’t help how his eyes tightened and his mouth felt like it hurt,  that awful moment where you can’t quite hold off the way you suddenly want to cry. ‘Ha…’ he breathed out, desperate to laugh because that was the only other option. ‘I'll be—Excuse me.’

Viktor’s expression was stricken. ‘Yuuri, wait. That’s not what I—I didn’t—’

‘You did,’ Yuuri said. His voice was so thick that he barely recognised it. Viktor was watching him with the dawning realisation that he had done this to him, like something was quietly ripping inside him. ‘God. You did. And that’s your problem. You’re too—you’re too honest, sometimes. I can’t quite—can’t quite _take_ it all the time.’

‘Yuuri—’

But it didn’t matter. Yuuri knew these paths, these roads. Had skidded down them enough in winter as a child, and it didn’t take him long to walk away.

 

* * *

 

 Minako pressed a coffee into his hand, after he’d refused the _sake_.

He watched her move around the small apartment above the studio, neat and nicely furnished, the crockery expensive and the coffee imported. The window over the sink let in wintry white light. Her movements were lithe and willowy even when she was shrouded in jumpers and leggings tucked into socks and her hair was pulled back messily.

‘I’m sorry for—’

‘If you apologise one more time, Yuuri, I _swear_ …’

But she didn’t finish. There was no threat in her words as she put the milk and coffee jar away. She pulled up a chair at her small kitchen table, and crossed a long leg over her knee. Her grey eyes were unbearably soft. He wanted her to be hard, like usual. He wanted things to go back to _normal_ , when he was training for the Grand Prix and when things between him and Viktor—him and Viktor—

‘Go on then,’ Minako said, cutting though his stilted thoughts. ‘What’s the silver fox done this time?’

Yuuri stared into his coffee, milky and sweetened. His hands felt numb around it. ‘He doesn’t want me to keep skating. Competitively.’

‘Why?’ Minako said, taking a sip of beer. Her tone was flat, but to her credit she had done nothing but ask _why_ , and this didn’t surprise him.

When they’d come back from Barcelona, Minako had been the first one he’d visited—before Yuuko, before he’d waited for his sister and father to wake up. And she’d welcomed him with coffee and arms flung wide and a smile that was wider.

 _I knew you would,_ it had said. Not in the way that some people’s did, that set, template kind of congratulations that didn’t really mean much. In the way that reminded Yuuri that all of it, as much as he owed it to Viktor, was because of her. Her first, tentative pushes onto the ice, the way she’d shaped him until he stood and moved just _so._ Until he’d become a winning thing, and in doing so found a part of himself that she’d helped him see.

And so now it seemed right that he should press the buzzer to her little studio. That he should interrupt one of her classes while a teardrop had frozen on his cheek. And he couldn’t bring himself to feel that bad; the apology had just been a formality, really.

‘I’ll always support you,’ she’d said, so many times. Again and again until it had almost lost its meaning to him—until it hadn’t. Until he needed it not for the first time and certainly not the last. He wondered if one day she’d regret how willingly she offered her hand out to him.

Now, Yuuri sighed. ‘He thinks I’m doing it because I want to—to keep him with me. He thinks my—’ Yuuri shook his head. It was ridiculous to think about it now. ‘He thinks my intentions aren’t pure. That I don’t want to skate for the right _reasons._ ’

There was a small line between her thin brows. Yuuri swallowed a mouthful of coffee and she asked, ‘What’s a _right_ reason?’

Yuuri shrugged, settling the mug back down on the table. ‘Skating because you love skating, I suppose.’

She watched him closely. ‘And is that why Viktor skated for so many years? Because he loved skating? Not because he wanted the competition. Not because he liked that people were _watching_ him.’

‘What do you—’

‘I _think_ , Yuuri,’ she said slowly, ‘that this is not so much about the idea of you not wanting to lose him, as the idea that he might lose you.’

Yuuri stared at her. Her head was tilted slightly, eyes earnest and waiting.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said softly. And he didn’t. Because how could Viktor— _Viktor_ —be worried about losing him? How was such a thing possible?

‘Oh, Yuuri,’ she sighed. ‘You’re both so impossibly… Imagine that you went on to win another Grand Prix. A Four Continents. A World Championships. Bigger and bigger and famous and capable. And suddenly—’ She clicked her fingers. ‘—you don’t need him anymore. He’s not _useful_ to you anymore. You don’t need a choreographer and a coach and someone—excuse me—to warm your bed because you’re _bigger than that_. You’ve surpassed that kind of—that need for a companion. That need for an idol when you’ve become one yourself.’ Her eyes softened. ‘He thinks you won’t need him anymore, or want him. Which is exactly what you worry about him, too.’

‘But that’s—that’s ridiculous,’ Yuuri said, breathless.

She looked at him. ‘Isn’t it.’

He looked back, head spinning. How was it possible that someone like Viktor could fear losing someone like Yuuri? How was it possible that he could think himself somehow replaceable; that he could, for any reason, be _unworthy_ of Yuuri? It made no sense.

And the sex—was the absence of it because Viktor thought that once Yuuri had it, once Viktor had given it to him, he wouldn’t want him anymore? That some yearning would be fulfilled? That anything more would be unwanted and too much? Was that was his comment had been about? _Inexperienced._ Was the fact of it playing around his mind again and again, and that soon Yuuri would not be?

Yuuri felt his heart grow tight at the possibility that it could be true. That Viktor could think so little of himself. And Yuuri realised that, really, he hadn’t been fair. He hadn’t allowed Viktor to be a typical young man in his twenties. He had put him on some kind of apotheosised pedestal, until Viktor became something Other, and Yuuri, inevitably, became something Less.

‘I’ve been an idiot,’ he said quietly, stark with dawning realisation that they might really just be equal.

‘Well,’ Minako said, but she didn’t deny it. ‘Go and talk to him Yuuri. Solve this, and you can move on. You can start something big again. A new journey.’

He was standing already, coffee half-finished, hands curled into fists on the table surface. But his body stuttered with the momentum.

Minako raised an eyebrow at him.

‘I don’t—I don’t know where he is,’ he said, and he sounded lost.

She gave him a soft, amused look. ‘Where do all figure skating World Champions go when they need to think?’ she said.

Heart pounding, breath made of short gasps, Yuuri went to the Ice Castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153259165059/excelsior-219  
> Please click [Kudos ❤], leave a comment, or reblog on Tumblr if you enjoyed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The music piece I imagined them (mentally) listening to is 'Verses' by Ólafur Arnalds & Alice Sara Ott. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfb71M-WwQ
> 
> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

**| Viktor |**

Viktor knew the moment Yuuri entered the rink. He watched him, out the corner of his eye, lace up his skates, and Yuuri wasn’t looking at him.

He supposed that said something: Yuuri had been watching him for his lifetime, and now, performing alone and in front of him, remarkably exclusive, he did not.

He supposed, too, that he should have been grateful for the general nonchalance Yuuri was giving him right now; it meant that his routine wasn’t skewed by being watched. Yuuri performed every time with Viktor watching, and the last time Viktor had competed he hadn’t felt the way he did for Yuuri now.

To know that he felt that way, and that Yuuri could look upon him the way Viktor had always watched him, was not a little unnerving.

It meant that his thighs shook a little when his skates hit the ice from a flip. It meant that his ankles, for a few seconds, felt a little _give_. It meant that his eyes searched for the form huddled on the bench rather than keeping his neck long, his chin high, his eyes on a distant point in the rink, something that wasn’t real and couldn’t look _back._

He caught the moment when Yuuri stood, when his rested on the open gate, when he watched Viktor with an openness that was entirely unapologetic.

 _Don’t look away from me_ , Yuuri had said once. Viktor wasn’t sure he could stand to be watched with this kind of intensity, when the only sound was the generator thrumming, the chalky sound of his skates cutting through the ice as he circled, as he flung himself into an Axel, let his arms and left leg stretch out on the landing, Yuuri a blur in his vision as he spun, a quiet whoosh of air in his ear. The music would have been reaching its deafening crescendo.

But there was no applause, no cheering. No music. The silence, in its place, was screaming at him.

 _You’re showing off_ , a voice muttered in his ear.

And yes. He was. He knew he was. Because his performance, now, could earn him a gold in any international arena. If he’d wanted. And instead he’d chosen this: an empty ice rink in rural Japan with no one but Yuuri to watch.

The thought shuddered through him as he jumped the quadruple Salchow, let his body wrap around itself with the turns. He landed, leg out, and let it rise and rise until he could grip his skate, head leaned back into the spin.

Slowly, he imagined the music coming to its inevitable close. The soft strings, bow movements light, a note of promise held in the quivering sound. His let his leg fall, let himself grow smaller, music closing in, whispering, sinking down to the ice until he thought he wouldn’t slow—wouldn’t be able to stop.

But he did. Eventually. He had to.

His heart was beating faster than it should be; his limbs were shaking more than they should. Yuuri’s eyes, when he met them, were dark.

Yuuri stepped onto the ice, and Viktor stood still. They hadn’t done this before; they hadn’t ever met one another halfway.

‘Skate with me,’ Yuuri said, sliding past him, body already in fluid motion. Viktor had watched him for a year, and wanted to keep watching him. He didn’t think he’d ever get enough.

He forced himself back into movement, until they were skating like every novice, slow loops around the rink. Viktor could feel the warmth from Yuuri’s body beside him. He could feel the impression Yuuri left in the air, a quiet breath of motion. Skating beside him was like walking; Viktor didn’t think anything could feel so natural.

He allowed himself to look at Yuuri, eyes staring ahead, dark and full of something that Viktor couldn’t recognise. He allowed himself to take him in: the poised hands, the pressed lips, the dark lashes that he had fallen asleep with Viktor watching.

 _I’m so proud,_ he wanted to tell him. _You've grown so much and I’m in awe of you and I’m so proud._

But instead he could only tell him this: ‘I am so sorry, Yuuri.’

And Yuuri said, ‘Stop trying to shatter me, Viktor.’

They fell out of sequence, which was too easy to do. It was a while before Viktor reached his side again, and Yuuri didn’t stop. He wasn't waiting for him, skates unceasing as they slid through the ice. The reality of it, as Viktor watched him move away, was—painful.

‘When I said I never wanted you to leave my side,’ Yuuri said, voice conversational,  ‘my version of never was an eternal kind of thing. I wasn’t making some grand gesture in a moment of—of spontaneity. I wasn’t just throwing about false promises and getting lost in adrenaline.’

‘I didn't think you were,’ said Viktor, soft.

Yuuri’s expression faltered, for a second, and that was enough for Viktor’s heart to steady itself, to know that Yuuri would always be Yuuri. That nothing, really, could change that much. He didn’t want Yuuri to be like him.

‘Skate with me,’ Yuuri said.

Viktor blinked. ‘But we are—’

‘ _Skate_ with me,’ Yuuri said.

Viktor stared at him as they made another circle around the edge of the rink. And then he nodded. ‘All right.’

They found themselves in the centre of the rink. They found themselves looking at each other. Yuuri was close enough that Viktor could touch him, brush a thumb across the rise of his cheekbone, across the lips that parted for him, over the arch of his eyes until his eyelashes shivered, fluttering to a close.

But he didn’t. Somewhere, there was music playing, rising in him, and he wondered if Yuuri was hearing the same thing.

They began like an echo. Mirroring one another, Yuuri’s body slipping away until he was just out of reach, Viktor’s outstretched hand missing the touch of him every time by a hairsbreadth. It was not difficult because they knew each other—they knew how the other skated. They _knew_ each other in a way that most could not.

But it _was_ difficult because Viktor was feeling something in his chest tighten, something settle in his throat every time Yuuri moved too far away, just out of reach, and he wondered if Yuuri knew he was playing out Viktor’s own torrid fantasy. No—nightmare. He wanted to catch him out of the triple Salchow they landed. He wanted to hold onto his waist and pull him against him in the turns. He wanted them together—moving _together_ —not just two entities that were performing, side-by-side, a mimicry.

And Viktor thought, at one point, that he would cry out, full of fear and some unspeakable desperation—and then Yuuri took his hand.

And Viktor, heart splintering, thought that was it.

 _Hold me,_ he thought Yuuri might be saying—wanted him to be saying, but Yuuri wouldn’t let himself get that close, and it was only when Yuuri started circling him that he realised, when he felt himself start to pivot as Yuuri’s body moved lower and lower until he was almost parallel to the ground, body one lean stretch so close to Viktor’s blades as they spiralled.

And then he was up, spinning in Viktor’s arms, warm and real, and the music had softened, and things had slowed, and the movement of them was a caress.

And it didn’t last long, because Viktor had awoken something in Yuuri that year. He had sparked something in Yuuri that Viktor had never expected to see—a kind of hunger, a voraciousness that used to be pinned onto himself by other people, but that Viktor had never seen so clearly—so _startlingly_ in anyone but Yuuri. And it echoed in pulled ties, and forehead presses, and _almost_ unbearable moments where they could not blink away from each other, and did not want to.

So it shouldn't have surprised him when Yuuri started to crouch, bracing himself, and Viktor had to do the same, felt himself going for a moment, and Yuuri’s eyes…

 _Are you ready?_ they were saying. _Can you do this? Can you help me do this? Can we do this?_

And Viktor nodded. He felt the tension of Yuuri in his arms, coiled like a spring wound right, felt it build and build, a supernova ready to burst, Viktor’s fingers pressing tight into Yuuri’s waist, and then he was gone: released in the air, spinning into the Axel, and Viktor felt his breath catch at the sight of him, at the impossibility that Viktor had pushed him through it, a burst of strength, arms trembling now, that Viktor thought perhaps he only had ever felt was _possible_ with Yuuri.

Yuuri landed with a hand touched onto the floor, and when he straightened, started moving again—

Viktor’s breath caught in his throat.

His smile was _beatific._

‘You know,’ Yuuri said. ‘I thought that would be harder.’

 

* * *

 

They skated slowly, after that. Because Viktor didn’t think he could take many more surprises—his heart couldn’t take what Yuuri was offering him so tenderly—and because the music was soft and sweet and tinged with a longing that Viktor thought he couldn’t bear.

He held him close; closer than he should have, body shaped against his in the turns, chest pressed against his in the small lifts that should have been difficult but weren’t. They weren’t. It played out with breathless ease and—

Hadn’t it always been like that?

The thought didn’t hit him; it seeped like hot water over his bones, slow and curling.

Hadn’t it always been the chase, the uncertain _reaching_ for something that Yuuri wouldn’t—didn’t know _how_ to give? And then catching him, having him at last, a butterfly caught in cupped palms. And then the slowness of it, the tenderness of it while they drank each other in, played off one another, mimicking and reshaping themselves around each other? Wasn’t it all they had ever been?

 _It’s us_ , Viktor realised. They had been skating blind, going on the looks and the angles and vague tilts of their body to know what was next, and the realisation echoed in the beatings of his heart. They had made their own music—made their own script. They had played out everything they were in movements and turns and touches that never felt close enough.

Viktor wanted everything Yuuri could give him. He didn’t want this to stop.

But when they did, when they had to, they pressed their foreheads together, chilled and slick with sweat, breaths mingling, and Viktor couldn’t bear to close his eyes, so he didn’t. And neither did Yuuri.

‘I’m sorry,’ Viktor whispered, clinging to him where they stood.

‘I’m sorry, too.’

He had never known what to do. Never known how to play with this much sentiment; this much emotion. It had always been too much for him. But he let it be too much this time. He had to let it or he’d lose it. Because Yuuri did everything because of how he _felt_ ; he made decisions on the feeling that he felt in his heart even if his mind was screaming at him. And Viktor… He wasn’t sure what he could call himself. A journalist for _International Figure Skating_ , once, had called him a ‘calculative genius’. Yakov had nodded at it, and Viktor had wondered only what it meant. He wondered more, now, where that placed him in Yuuri’s world of sentiment.

So Viktor said, ‘I’m so scared that—that I could lose you.’

And Yuuri, thank god, seemed to know what he meant. Viktor didn’t have to say anything else; was saved from having to put _sentiment_ into words. Yuuri was smiling when he said, ‘I didn’t think you ever got scared or nervous.’

Viktor paused. ‘Neither did I.’

‘Maybe we don’t know each other very well,’ Yuuri said, smile fading, ‘if we think we’re both capable of losing each other.’

‘Sometimes I think I’ve never known anyone more than I know you,’ Viktor said, the truth of it feeling strange on his tongue, ‘and sometimes I think I don’t know you at all. And the part of me that thinks it _doesn’t_ know you…’

‘Frightens you.’

‘ _So much_ ,’ Viktor breathed, and this time he did close his eyes. He didn’t know what to do with this knowledge laid bare between them. He didn’t know what to do with a truth that was saying too much—more than he had ever been used to.

He thought it probably happened in Beijing, a kind of that moment when he’d said something that _was_ calculative, and realised that something had to change. Because it hadn’t been genius; it had been cruelty. And he’d had to stand there and feel the words leave his mouth and _know_ how they sounded—and Yuuri’s face, crumpling, felt like a bullet.

 _I can’t say something like that to him again,_ Viktor had thought. Not because Yuuri couldn’t handle it—and he couldn’t—but because Viktor thought he couldn’t either. Not if Yuuri gave him that same thing back again, an angry, desperate plea, that to hear it back made Viktor realise, now, why Yuuri might fear the way he did. Why he might possibly think Viktor might leave him.

Simply,  and he realised this with some sickening horror, it was because he’d already threatened it once, hadn’t he?

If he apologised now, he didn’t think he’d stop.

‘Let’s not—let’s not make this bigger than it is,’ Yuuri said, and his fingertips were now touching Viktor’s cheeks. ‘Let’s leave it here. On this rink.’

‘I haven’t told you everything.’

‘You’re scared I’ll get famous and leave you behind,’ said Yuuri, falsely blasé. ‘That I’ll find something better than you. That’s it, isn’t it?’

Viktor blinked. The words were stark and plain and _ridiculous._ ‘Yes,’ he said, and that sounded ridiculous too.

‘And I’ve been terrified of the same thing. Which makes us both as ridiculous as each other.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said Viktor, thinking that he was supposed to be the one that made _sense_ of things when Yuuri let his heart run his mouth. He was supposed to be calm and watch Yuuri with lucid eyes when everything else ran around them, when the cheers of the crowds rang too loud— _look at me, look only at me, and don’t listen to them_. ‘Absolutely ridiculous.’

Yuuri was watching him. ‘So,’ he said.

Viktor let out a low sigh. ‘What will it be, then?’ he asked. ‘The World Championships are soon. The Four Continents are sooner.’

‘You’ll train me?’ he said, but really he was saying, _Are_ _you don’t want anything else other than this? Other than me?_

‘I said I would.’ _I’m sure._

Yuuri nodded to himself, and let his eyes fall down. His cheeks had a red flush to them, from the skate that Viktor’s head was still reeling from, and from something else. They were still holding each other, pressed against each other, and Viktor thought he needed to prepare himself for the moment of loss when they let go.

‘We’ll decide later,’ Yuuri said. ‘For now I just want… this.’

‘This?’

Yuuri held him, closer, tucked his face beneath Viktor’s jaw line, hot breath on his neck. ‘This.’

 

* * *

 

**| Yuuri |**

‘Hi, Yuri.’

On the screen, the boy scowled.

His accent was thicker when he was angry: ‘Viktor said I should congratulate you.’

Yuuri glanced at Viktor, sitting beside him on the bed. He had a knee tucked up, chin resting on it. He looked bright and boyish, wrapped in his green robe, hair loose across his eyes.

‘Did he,’ said Yuuri, flat.

And then there was silence. Yuuri looked back to Yuri through the screen.

‘Well?’ said Viktor. Typically, he sounded amused.

‘I said you’d told me to. I didn’t say I’d fucking do it.’

‘ _Prikusi yazyk_ ,’ Viktor said, not harshly, but there was a bite to them that Yuuri saw catch on the boy’s downcast eyes, the green simmering.

Yuuri wasn’t sure whether to sigh or laugh. He felt too warm to be angry. Felt too aware of Viktor, a flash of white skin smooth as ice, bare beneath the open robe, and he felt like this was the first time Viktor had come—the first time he’d been an entity that was real and solid and that Yuuri, because Viktor let him, could touch.

‘Swearing’s not a fu—not a _crime_.’

‘No,’ said Viktor, calmly, ‘but the quicker you get out of the habit, the less likely you are to slip into an expletive in an interview. The ISU won’t tolerate that much.’

‘Oh,’ said Yuri, snide. ‘I’ve got _standards_ to uphold, have I?’

‘Yes, actually.’

Yuri blinked. That was not, apparently, what he had been expecting.

Behind him, Yuuri could see a small apartment, sparsely furnished. There was a photo of a young woman with dyed red hair blown up across one of the walls, lit up by a wintry mid-morning light. In Japan, the skies had darkened a few hours ago, and the window panes were freezing to the touch.

‘How is Mila?’ asked Viktor. The name was vaguely familiar to Yuuri; he realised Mila must have been who Yuri was staying with—the woman in the photo.

Yuri pulled a face. ‘She sings too loud in the mornings…’

‘But?’

He looked away. ‘I like her cat,’ he muttered. ‘It’s—it’s a Maine Coon.’

Yuuri tried to hide a smile, and Viktor turned the laptop around towards him until Yuuri fell out of the frame. His smile would make Yuri spiteful.

‘And Yakov?’ said Viktor.

‘Old and angry.’

‘Well, we can’t have everything,’ Viktor sighed. ‘Your routine for the Worlds is going well?’

‘There’s no competition,’ said Yuri. His words were pointed. ‘Not now.’

_Not now you and Yuuri aren’t skating._

‘Don’t be arrogant, Yuri. If Phichit’s skating—’

‘He’s not.’

‘—or Jean-Jacques or Chris, then you need to be careful. Not that I need to remind you. A toe out of line and Yakov would…’

They shared a moment of silence. Yuuri quietly wondered what small horror they would have endured under Yakov’s tutelage for a mistake.  

And then Viktor said, ‘You could come here. If you’d like. Yuuri and I would train you. Choreograph you.’

Yuuri stared at Viktor. He and Viktor training someone like Yuri? Not only that—what had Viktor promised to him only hours ago at Ice Castle? Yuuri hadn’t wanted to share last year, and he was not willing to share now.

He shouldn’t have worried, because Yuri pulled a face at the offer. Always pulling faces, clicking his tongue, making ‘tch’ sounds. Ruthlessly, relentlessly disappointed by everything. Yuuri wondered how much someone would have to be disappointed with themselves—so deeply unhappy—that they might be that hostile.

‘Thanks but no thanks.’

‘A thank you,’ said Viktor, surprise—false—colouring his tone. ‘That's more than I expected.’

‘Things work fine here with Yakov,’ Yuri gritted out, ignoring Viktor. ‘I don’t need you two ruining it.’

‘And you’re happy there?’ said Viktor, ignoring Yuri, too. They seemed to listen only to the words of the other that they wanted to.

‘Am I supposed to be happy?’

The words echoed around Yuuri’s bedroom, and Yuuri couldn’t help feel a slight tightness in his chest, knowing what Yuuri was seeing: the two of them, wrapped in a blissed kind of warmth; wrapped in each other, while Yuri sat in an apartment amidst the harsh winter of Moscow. Alone.

Through the speakers, they heard the sound of a door opening and closing, and then the red-haired woman was leaning into the camera with a smile and an open hand. The difference between her greeting and the scowl Yuri now wore was comical.

‘Hi, Viktor!’ she said. ‘How goes Japan?’

‘It’s good to see you, Mila,’ said Viktor, voice warm. Yuuri couldn’t help notice how his accent thickened the more he spoke with Mila and Yuri. It was oddly endearing—the clipped words, the long vowels. ‘I hope you're looking after Yuri well.’

Yuri’s mouth fell open, ready for some waspish retort, and then—

‘Oh, Yuri manages just fine here on his own,’ Mila said easily. And Yuri’s mouth closed, instantly mollified. He was like dry tinder, ready to spark at even the suggestion of heat. ‘I hear you’re to see an old friend soon, Viktor.’

Yuuri watched Viktor’s expression, but he seemed as confused as Yuuri. ‘Old friend?’ he said. ‘Here?’

‘She hasn’t told you then,’ said Mila.

‘Who hasn’t told me what?’

Her look was impish and amused. ‘I’ll let it be a surprise.’

‘I hate surprises,’ Viktor said. And Yuuri knew how difficult—how complex things became when Viktor could not control them. Like Yuuri.

Mila smiled wider. ‘I know.’

The conversation changed. Sometimes they talked in Russian, which Yuuri didn’t mind, but mostly they talked in English, because apparently Viktor did mind. Mostly they talked about skating, and about Yuuri—sitting quiet, blushing—and sometimes they talked about Moscow and how it was looking as Christmas approached. ‘Cold’ was the general consensus.

Eventually Yuri was called away—‘Homework and practice. What else? Idiot.’—and Mila ended the video call with another enigmatic comment—‘Give them my love.’—with a waggle of her fingers and a wink. The screen went dark, and a Yuri’s profile image of an astoundingly miserable looking cat appeared in place of the video.

‘Why did you ask him that?’ Yuuri said, closing the lid of the laptop and setting it on the floor. Viktor had fallen back against the pillows with a sigh. A stretch of white thigh was exposed beneath the robe, the hairs light and golden, and Yuuri forced himself not to stare. ‘Why say we’d train him?’

‘Because he doesn’t know you might compete, and because I knew he’d say no.’

Yuuri looked at him, waiting.

‘Because he was still hoping I’d _ask_ , Yuuri,’ Viktor sighed. ‘He’s still a fifteen-year-old boy.’

‘Nearly sixteen. And with a point to prove.’

‘Aren’t we all trying to prove something?’ Viktor asked. The question side-tracked Yuuri for a moment. It was remarkably astute of him. Not for the first time, Viktor was perhaps seeing and understanding something that Yuuri wasn’t. He was not sure why it surprised him that Viktor might understand a boy like Yuri Plisetsky.  

‘He’s still angry I took you from him,’ Yuuri guessed.

‘I was never _his._ I wasn’t anyone’s.’

‘And yet they all liked to imagine they were,’ said Yuuri. ‘I liked to imagine you were mine. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.’

Viktor’s face heated. ‘But the difference was that when I met you I wanted to imagine _you_ were _mine_.’

Yuuri swallowed, and look away. If he didn’t he thought his face might break with any sort of smile.

He said, ‘He’s going to hate me if I compete again.’

‘If he takes his personal thoughts out on you more than he appreciates you as a rival to measure himself by, then he’s not the skater we both thought that he was.’

 _Who did you think he was?_ Yuuri thought. He was quite certain that their opinions were not, actually, the same.

But he didn’t ask that. What he did ask was if Viktor knew what Mila had been talking about.

‘Not a clue,’ said Viktor. His face was lined in a frown of thought. ‘Old friends are… few and far between.’

‘You’re not unpopular, Viktor,’ Yuuri said, wry. He stood up from the bed and turned off the main lights in the bedroom, plunging it into something made of soft orange lamplight and dark shadows.

‘There’s a difference between being popular and having a lot of friends, Yuuri. When I started skating, things were… We didn’t have to be friends for the media. In some ways it wasn’t as sharply brutal—as competitive as now. But there was no pretence about it. We weren’t being so closely watched ten years ago.’

‘I’m not friends with Phichit for appearances.’

Viktor shook his head as Yuuri wandered back over. ‘That’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is that _I_ didn’t have friends. I had fellow competitors. I didn’t have time—I didn’t _want_ anything else. It ended there.’

Yuuri allowed himself to climb onto the bed, curling until he was pressed against Viktor’s side, cheek resting on a hard chest. His heart was throbbing hard as Viktor’s arm slipped around him, pulled him closer, as his other hand came around to card through Yuuri’s hair. They were aching and tired from the skate. From the interview. From everything that had come and gone in a day. Sleep seemed like the sweetest promise of something they could be given right now.    

‘That seems lonely,’ Yuuri said, quietly, thinking about Phichit, and Minako, and Yuuko, and a family that was there when he needed them. And how, somehow, it hadn’t been enough.

‘I didn’t mind,’ said Viktor, voice warm and soft and deep. Yuuri felt the vibrations of it as he pressed into him.

 _I didn’t mind,_ Yuuri thought. _That’s not a denial._

Viktor continued, ‘Skating seemed, then, to be all that I needed.’

‘Then?’

‘Before I met you.’

Yuuri pressed closer. ‘I was lonely,’ he said. ‘Even though I had everyone. But they were abstract. They were on the periphery. They weren’t—they weren’t _there_ and _with me_.’

‘And then?’

Yuuri reached up, pressing a kiss on the smooth underside of Viktor’s jaw. ‘And then I met you.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I hope I did the skating piece okay...)
> 
>  _Prikusi yazyk_ is a Russian colloquialism for 'watch your mouth' or 'bite your tongue'. The Cyrillic is Прикуси язык (provided because yuris-on-ice thinks it 'looks sexy').
> 
> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153316987599/excelsior-319
> 
> Please click [Kudos ❤], leave a comment, or reblog on Tumblr if you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

**| Yuuri |**

Yuuri was helping at the inn when they arrived. Christmas was in a week, and Yuuri had been back in Japan for a week. The cold air brought with it more customers escaping from the snow and the icy paths of Hasetsu, families and couples on romantic getaways and groups of tourists, and the _onsen_ reached its peak use.

It meant that even with his parents and Mari, they were always a little understaffed, and Yuuri didn’t mind giving a hand to carry drinks or serve food from the kitchens. He didn’t mind because at least he got to watch Viktor try and speak to the locals and serve drinks from behind the bar, which was… something.

For a man who spoke little to no Japanese in a bar with people who spoke little English and even less Russian, his charisma was remarkable.

‘Our Viktor’s a popular one, isn’t he?’ his mother had said once, peering around the doorway of the kitchens. Makkachin sat at their feet, waiting for scraps of food to miraculously fall from passing plates, tongue lolling.

‘He’s not _our Viktor_ , Mum,’ grumbled Mari, standing behind her.

Viktor seemed to be trying to tell a group of elderly women about Moscow, his English slow for them and his hand gestures outstandingly energetic. Yuuri couldn’t blame him for lack of trying as Viktor handed them a tray of tea. And when Viktor looked up, and caught Yuuri’s eye as he watched him quietly with his mother and sister, a grin of startling white teeth split across Viktor’s face. He waved. Mouthed, ‘ _Hi_.’

Yuuri felt hot.

‘ _Definitely_ not _our Viktor_ ,’ said Mari.

Now, Yuuri was snaking his way through tables with the drinks tray and an apron wrapped around his waist. He didn’t mind that this was how things had gone for the past week, in between training sessions at Ice Castle. He didn’t mind that he could feel his mum and dad watching him with a kind of fond hopefulness. Hopefulness that perhaps he would realise he could spend a life like this, so long as he had the rink in the breaks.

He didn’t mind, because he knew that no matter how they looked at him, or what quiet expectation they had for him, he would never choose it. It wasn’t what he wanted. Not now, anyway. He knew what it was that he wanted now, and no amount of his parents’ wilful hoping could change that or make it otherwise.

Yuuri didn’t notice when the door to the inn opened, a quiet jingle above the door. It had been opening and closing all day, gusts of wintry air blowing in, chased back out by the heat of the fire lit on the far left wall. He didn’t notice when two small, lithe forms made their way through the packed tables towards the bar. He didn’t notice when they pulled back the fur-rimmed hoods of their coats, and sat themselves down on the stools.

But he did notice when the jug slipped from Viktor’s fingers and smashed into the floor.

Conversation stilted in the inn, but smashing glass was a common sound, and it didn’t take long to pick up again. But the lull meant that Viktor’s voice was clear from where Yuuri was standing.

‘ _Sascha_?’ he heard Viktor say, incredulous. Yuuri watched his eyes grow wide in disbelief.

‘ _Skol'ko zim,_ Vítenʹka,’ came the reply.

Opposite him, Yuuri could see a blonde head peeking out past the collar of a coat. It was a woman’s voice. Next to her, there was another woman, a brunette. He couldn’t see their faces.

‘ _Chto ty zdies dielaiesh_?’ said Viktor, mouth hanging open.

The woman didn’t reply, and Yuuri realised he had settled the tray down, the apron now a bundle of cloth in his fist. He was already ducking around to the bar.

‘Watch where you step, Viktor,’ Yuuri said, walking around the smashed glass and the water rolling across the floor. ‘Don’t cut yourself.’

Viktor stared at him, and it was like, for a moment, he didn’t recognise him. Like he was somewhere else, with other people, in a different time—not with him.

‘Yuuri,’ he said. His voice was strange. ‘I…’ He trailed off, and his eyes fell upon the two women again.

Yuuri saw them clearly now: the blonde was a white woman, sharp and angled, around Yuuri’s age, eyes a pale grey that was almost white. The other was Japanese, even younger, dark-haired and dark-eyed, her features small. Standing, she couldn’t have been more than five foot. Her eyes brightened when she saw Yuuri, and he found himself almost smiling back. Where the blond woman was sharp eyes and hard angles, she was soft and smooth. They were both remarkably pretty.

‘You must be Yuuri,’ the blonde woman said, accent thick, the ‘r’ rolled. She held out a gloved hand. 

‘Yes,’ said Yuuri, shaking it. He looked at Viktor.

‘Yuuri, this is—an old friend,’ Viktor said, seeming to struggle with the words. ‘Sascha.’

Yuuri didn’t know why, but the hesitation in it made his heart stutter.

_You said you didn’t have old friends._

‘It’s good to meet a friend of Viktor’s,’ said Yuuri. He pulled on a smile. ‘He knows so many of mine, but I think I know so little of him.’

Viktor shifted beside him. ‘Sascha and I went to Sambo-70 together when we were younger,’ he said, and then paused. ‘Well. I was some years ahead.’

Sambo-70. Yuuri had heard of it—one of the top schools in Russia for training athletes. They churned out figure-skating world champions as fast as Russia won golds. Yuuri knew only vaguely that Viktor had gone there, but they’d never spoken of it. Viktor’s life was filled with gaps, and, for a moment, Yuuri felt breathlessly unsure of the man next to him.

Who exactly, other than the man he had seen on TV and the one he had known for the past year, was Viktor? How much of who Yuuri knew and thought him to be was some stitched version of media appearances and a year of coaching? _Who was he_ in between the seams?

Sascha turned to the Japanese woman. ‘This is Hatsuyo,’ said Sasha. Her cheeks reddened slightly, and it didn’t take Yuuri long to figure out why. ‘My girlfriend.’

 _Girlfriend,_ thought Yuuri. He shouldn’t have, but he felt the wave of relief spill over him. When he looked at Viktor, his gaze was knowing, and quietly amused behind the shock that still lingered there.

‘ _Hajimemashite_ , Hatsuyo-san,’ said Yuuri, turning back to her, bowing slightly.

Her smile, too, was knowing. _We can play with foreign languages too._ ‘ _Hajimemashite_ , Yuuri-san,’ she said. There was a slight twang to her accent that Yuuri couldn’t place. ‘ _Dozo yoroshiku_.’

The four of them stared at each other for a moment. They were tethered to Viktor and Sascha, but Yuuri could feel the waves of uncertainty coming off Viktor. Was this, Yuuri wondered, who Mila had been referring to a few days ago?

‘Are you… both figure skaters?’ Yuuri asked tentatively.

The response this met was slight laughter. Yuuri flushed. Had he said something wrong?

‘Yuuri,’ said Viktor. ‘Sascha is a pair skater. She was in the Olympics two years ago.’

Yuuri didn’t think he could embarrass himself much further. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t…’

‘Look beyond your competition?’ Hatsuyo said, in perfect English. Yuuri understood why her Japanese had sounded strange: she spoke with a Canadian accent. ‘I don’t blame you. Why would we be expected to know every male single skater?’

 _Because no one’s expected to be that selfishly introspective_ , his mind supplied.

‘You’ve skated at the Olympics too?’ Yuuri said instead.

Hatsuyo shook her head. ‘I’m a pair skater, but only within the ISU. I was injured two years ago.’

A quiet moment of sympathy passed. They knew, all of them, what injury could mean, and what dark promise it could hold. More often than not, a skater wouldn’t set foot on the ice again.

 _At least you’re not injured_ , he used to tell himself, when things were dark enough. He’d laugh bitterly at the thought. _Yes,_ he would hear himself say back, the voice in his head snide. _At least I only have a crippling anxiety disorder to battle with._

‘Sascha,’ said Viktor, his tone careful. ‘I haven’t seen you in more than ten years. What are you—’

‘Is there somewhere we could talk?’ she said. ‘Privately?’

‘No one here really speaks English,’ Yuuri offered awkwardly.

Sascha said nothing to this, and Viktor was holding his hands out a little, helpless.

‘We can go to my room,’ Yuuri sighed.

Viktor led them up the stairs behind the bar, while Yuuri went to find Mari. His sister was smoking a cigarette out the back of the inn, scrolling through a Twitter feed on her phone. She spared him a glance as he opened the door, light spilling out onto the snow.

‘Can you watch over things for a while?’

She blinked slowly, smoke seeping from the corners of her mouth. ‘I guess,’ she said, and stubbed her cigarette out beneath her shoe.

‘There’s a smashed pitcher behind the bar too. Sorry.’

Her look was withering, her sigh drawn out.

Upstairs, Sascha and Hatsuyo were sitting on the edge of Yuuri’s bed. Viktor was leaning against the desk. Yuuri prayed a silent thanks that it was clean. His mother had a habit of lighting candles everywhere, and inside it smelled of something sweet like wild figs.

They looked over at him as he slid the door shut behind him, and propped himself on the desk beside Viktor. Yuuri found himself wanting to touch him, to be held. He was not sure why he now felt he needed the kind of security that he used to think was stupid and too dependent. Maybe it was something to do with the feeling that Sascha was intruding on what Viktor and Yuuri had made together; Yuuri didn’t want to give him back to anyone.

‘I watched your Grand Prix skate, Yuuri,’ said Hatsuyo. ‘You were wonderful. I haven’t seen anything like it since…’ Her eyes fell onto Viktor. ‘Well,’ she said. And then, ‘Huh.’ Like something was making sense.

‘Are you still skating?’ said Sascha. Her accent was thick but she spoke with a slow nonchalance that reminded Yuuri of his sister, a kind of indifference towards much of anything. Her eyes were too sharp, though. Like Viktor’s, they belied her.

‘Yes,’ said Yuuri. ‘I’m considering what I want to compete in next.’

‘So you’ve decided nothing yet.’

Yuuri paused. ‘Technically,’ he said. He hadn’t contacted the Japan Skating Federation yet. As far as the ISU were concerned so far, he wouldn’t be appearing in any competition that year. He knew he couldn’t wait much longer. He couldn’t deny that Viktor’s presence wasn’t adding to his uncertainty, and he couldn’t deny that he _was_ , still, uncertain.

Shouldn’t everything have been clear?

But he knew what Viktor was thinking, and what he wanted to tell him: _Just_ wanting _something isn’t enough._ And they both knew that more than anything.

‘Sascha,’ Viktor said. His voice had that lingering sound to it that it had downstairs. ‘I haven’t seen you in ten years, and you turn up in Hasetsu and… _Why?_ ’ He was looking at her like, for a moment, he had looked at Yuuri: that moment of disconnection. Only now, Yuuri was the grounding thing, and she was the interloper. The thing that wasn’t quite meant to be there.

Sascha and Hatsuyo exchanged a look. And then they exchanged hands, fingers locked together between them.

‘We want your help,’ Sascha said. ‘Both of you.’

Viktor shifted. ‘Go on.’

‘The ISU regulations state that to enter as a pair into any ISU sanctioned competition, the pair must be one lady and one man.’

Yuuri stared at them. They couldn’t be…

‘Go on,’ said Viktor again. His voice was flat.

‘Hatsuyo and I… We want to change that. We want to skate as a pair. Together. At the Worlds next year.’

They waited. Yuuri could feel his heart careening in his chest.

Viktor said, ‘You’re fucking insane.’

 

* * *

 

  **| Viktor |**

Viktor’s head was ringing.

‘Viktor, just listen—’

‘ _Nyet_ , Sascha. I don’t care what—what _ridiculous_ plan you have. I don’t care. You can’t just go about and change the rules when you want to, Sascha. It doesn’t _work_ like that. We’re not at Sambo anymore.’

Her expression was angry. She was standing now. ‘I’m not changing them because I want to. I’m changing them because they’re _wrong_ —’

‘They’re _right_ because they’re appropriate to physical _ability,_ Sascha—’

‘Don’t make me laugh. Like you couldn’t throw Yuuri in a spin if you had to—if you wanted to train for it _enough_. Hatsuyo and I have paired before. We can perform routines. We _work_ together.’

‘Good for you,’ he spat. ‘I’m so glad that because you can do something you think nothing applies to you.’ He shook his head. ‘Always breaking the rules, Sascha. Can’t you just do one thing— _one thing_ right for _once_.’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ she said. ‘Like you always stuck to the rules. Except—oh, yeah. I guess you would now the Federation are trying to suck you off.’

Viktor’s face shuttered.

‘Viktor?’ said Yuuri. ‘What’s she—’

‘You haven’t _told_ him?’ said Sascha. She grimaced. ‘Oh, Viktor…’

‘Told me what? What haven’t you told me?’

‘Sascha,’ Hatsuyo murmured. ‘It’s not your place.’

‘Listen to your _girlfriend_ ,’ Viktor said, hard. ‘It’s not.’

‘Viktor—’

‘Later, Yuuri,’ Viktor cut across him. He couldn’t. Not now. And really he hadn’t planned to at all. Of course she knew; of course she’d ruin it and come and say this. He wanted to laugh because how _typical of her_ was this? Sascha Constantin, the kid prodigy, the one who jumped the triples when the coach said doubles. The one who’d sneak food from the kitchens and wander the halls at night and fuck the consequences.

The one he could hear now; he could see her wild grin and her wilder eyes; ‘ _Trakhat posledstviya_!’ she’d shout out, bottle in hand, limbs loose as she stumbled around the roof of the school in winter. The one who’d caught him when he was fifteen in the music room and told his parents when they visited that he—

Viktor clenched his jaw, staring at her. Sitting with her girlfriend. How _deeply_ ironic. She should have stayed is St. Petersburg. There was a reason they hadn’t seen each other in ten years.

‘I have been skating since I was five, Sascha,’ he told her now. ‘Twenty-three years. You could have me stripped of my medals. Do you have _any_ idea what you’re asking from me? From us? How _discredited_ we’d be.’

‘When has skating ever just been about winning and reputation for you, Viktor?’

‘You _seriously_ overestimate me if you think it’s anything more for me.’

She gave him a pointed look. And then her eyes swung to Yuuri. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘How could someone who didn’t care about anything except winning go on to coach someone like that?’

‘Someone like that,’ said Viktor. His hands were clenched at his sides. He felt more than saw the way Yuuri was growing still and quiet behind him. Things had been going so well. In a week, he was planing on kissing Yuuri under the mistletoe. Why did it have to morph into this? ‘What the fuck are you saying, Sasha.’

‘I’m saying that you’re more than that. That this is bigger than us. This is—this could make history, Viktor. Just like you did. Every screen plastered with the two of you at the Cup of China. Do you know how _groundbreaking_ that was?’

‘It wasn’t meant to be groundbreaking,’ he said. It wasn’t meant to be anything—it wasn’t meant to be anyone’s. It was his and Yuuri’s, pressed into the ice. It was a hand cradling Yuuri’s head and a smile that tasted like spring. It was theirs. Not Sascha’s. Not Twitter’s. Not any sort of movement’s. He hadn’t done it to make a point; he’d done it because he wanted to, because Yuuri had been waiting to be kissed, and because he could.

‘You think I don’t know what I’d be _risking_ if I did this, Viktor?’ Sascha said, an almost furtive whisper. ‘You think Hatsuyo and I aren’t aware of what could happen?’

‘Risking? _Could happen_?’ Viktor couldn’t believe she had said the words. ‘There’s nothing tentative about this, Sascha. This isn’t a _maybe._ You will be _ruined_. This is it for you.’

She was looking at him. ‘And it’s not for you?’ she said quietly, grey eyes intense. ‘Yuuri still hasn’t made his mind up and yet he’s fit and uninjured. That says enough. You’ve had twenty-three years of skating, Viktor. You don’t think you might want to actually put it to use? Make a difference?’

His lip curled. He’d made his difference; he’d left his mark on the skating world already. ‘You’re saying you want me to throw that all away—make a _difference_ —so you can fulfil your little lesbian fantasy?’

A beat of silence.

Yuuri choked. ‘ _Viktor._ ’

And it was that—the sound, the horror that Viktor saw in Yuuri’s face when he turned, his own look of spite reflected back at him through Yuuri’s dark eyes—that he heard and realised what he’d just said.

God, what had he just said?

‘No,’ he said. ‘Sascha. That’s not what I—’

‘I think you did,’ said Hatsuyo quietly.

And Viktor heard Yuuri’s words so clearly, echoed back at him. _You’re too honest sometimes. I can’t take it all the time._ Except this wasn’t honesty; there was no truth in this. This was just cruelty.

There was a pause. ‘I think we’ve made a mistake,’ said Hatsuyo. Her hand, from where she was sitting on the bed, was locked in with Sascha’s, standing in front of her. Their knuckles were white, hands shaking.

‘No, wait,’ said Yuuri, taking a step forward. ‘I want to hear what you have to say.’

Viktor stared at him. ‘Yuuri, you’re not—you can’t be serious.’

‘We haven’t heard them, Viktor. All you’ve done is shout at them and throw slurs.’

‘It’s okay, Yuuri,’ said Sascha. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Of course it is,’ Viktor muttered, turning back to her. ‘Of course it’s _all right_. You’re not the one who will be ruined at the end of it. Little Sascha never could do any wrong, could she? Little Sascha-Sanda from Romania. She couldn’t understand. She was only just saying what she _saw_.’

Her expression blanched. Viktor wanted to laugh. Had she thought, bafflingly, that he’d somehow forgotten? That he wouldn’t take this now for everything she was worth? That she could come here and ask him this with an outstretched hand and not expect to have it bitten off? Of course she had. Because she could fuck the consequences. And little Sanda could do no wrong.

 

* * *

  

**| Yuuri |**

Things fell quiet after Viktor left, and Yuuri couldn’t say with any certainty that he could recount what had just happened. He felt, suddenly, cold. His head felt full and heavy. He kept hearing Viktor’s words, thick with something that Yuuri couldn’t know about. They lingered with the air of something that had happened and that Yuuri hadn’t been there for. He kept hearing the girls’ questions that were insane and sent a thrill through Yuuri to think about. Because _what if_?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, whisper quiet as Viktor slid the door shut behind him, given up on speaking, no this crazed request for help from Sascha and Hatsuyo. Viktor’s silhouette disappeared down the hallway. Yuuri watched it leave, feeling himself pulled towards it, and feeling himself rooted to where he stood.

He wasn’t sure what he was apologising for. Viktor’s cruelty that spoke of something that Yuuri didn’t understand? That he’d stood quiet himself and said nothing? Maybe he was apologising to Viktor, who couldn’t hear him, and yet Yuuri wished he could.

‘It’s all right,’ Sascha said, sighing. She fell back onto the edge of Yuuri’s bed. She ran her hands through her hair, and kept them there, fingers locked at the back of her neck. ‘We weren’t sure he would...’

‘But you hoped.’

‘I hoped,’ said Sascha. ‘It was a long shot.’

‘You still did it,’ murmured Hatsuyo, leaning against her side. ‘You did it for me.’

Yuuri stared at her. She’d been quiet, watching the whole thing. ‘This is all your idea?’

Hatsuyo bit her lip. She shrugged. ‘I thought it might be possible. In Canada it’s… If you’re gay it’s okay. If you’re a woman it’s okay. Everything’s okay. And then I went to Russia with Sascha and things were not _okay._ Even—even here it’s not _okay._ And I want it to be.’ She sighed. ‘Sascha and I skated together before, as a pair. We were just messing about. It didn’t mean anything. But I knew I wanted to do something—to inspire people through skating. Not just for women, but for same-sex couples. And this… It was the only way I thought it could be possible. And—it might do nothing. It might achieve nothing. We might fail before we start. But that’s not as bad as not trying at all.’

Yuuri’s heart twisted. ‘So you came to us because we’re a male couple?’

‘And because you’re Japanese and Russian. And because Sascha knows Viktor. And because we hoped—I hoped it would be enough to you both. That the risk would be worth it.’

_This isn’t a risk. You will be ruined._

Yuuri swallowed. ‘Tell me how you planned to do it.’

The two women stared at him. Sascha was the one to speak. ‘Seriously?’ she said.

‘I’m not promising anything,’ he said. And he wasn’t. ‘Just tell me.’

Sascha blinked. ‘Yeah,’ she said, exchanging a look with Hatsuyo. ‘Yeah, okay.’

Yuuri sat back down against the desk, and he listened.

 

* * *

 

Viktor was on the phone when Yuuri found him.

He thought, at first, that Viktor was speaking about him, but the ‘Yuri’ was short and clipped, not the long, outstretched word that could sometimes make Yuuri shiver.

He was angry. Yuuri hadn’t seen him angry much. His anger, when it came, was always a quiet thing. Something that settled behind his eyes and watched. His anger was a low voice and a still pose and words that promised the night.

When Yuuri thought he hadn’t seen him angry much, he meant he hadn’t seen him angry like _this_ : all harsh, hissed words that sounded cut off before they could really break out, and a hand that was flying wildly, and shaking. This was not the affable man with wild gestures that served behind the bar sometimes and gave the Hasetsu locals their tea and their _sake_ and their cigarettes.

This was a man made of sharp cliffs and blizzards and avalanches. This was a man willing to wreck.

Yuuri watched him as he paced in the snow, footprints wearing it down to the earth beneath it. He moved like a caged animal, and his eyes didn’t dare to brighten; his lips didn’t dare to lift. He was shouting without shouting. Yuuri wondered what Yuri was saying on the other end of the phone—how he was taking all of this in.

Was this a Viktor Yuri knew? Was this a Viktor Sascha had grown up with? Yuuri knew that the Viktor he saw in the newspapers and the interviews on the TV was not fully the man that he thought he knew; it was a slight glimmer of him, shaved off from the ‘real’ version and ballooned into something else—some caricature. Except what was the real version?

The trouble with having so many different versions was that it became difficult finding the one with the most truth.

Eventually, Viktor noticed. The sky had taken on that hazy grey light of a sinking sun, a world trying to hold onto those last shivering moments of daylight, and Yuuri felt himself caught in that last glare of orange-red light.

Viktor stilled when he saw him, a double glance. He muttered something into the phone and didn’t wait for a response before he hung up.

‘Yuri?’ Yuuri asked.

‘He had a question about his routine.’

‘You sounded angry with him.’

A muscle jumped in Viktor’s jaw. ‘Not quite in the mood to give coaching advice right now.’

‘Don’t take it out on him. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy, remember.’

Viktor made a sound in the back of his throat, rolling his eyes. He shoved his phone into his pocket, and kept his hands there, like he was worried he might do something with them otherwise.

‘You always do that,’ Viktor said.

‘Do what?’

‘Always—always think and speak with your heart. You don’t use your head enough, Yuuri. You don’t see what’s around you. How awful somethings are around you.’

Yuuri watched him. He didn’t know what to do with this Viktor. ‘Are you talking about Sascha or about yourself?’ he asked. The question hung in the air, freezing, between them. It said that Yuuri knew exactly when to use his head, and that maybe Viktor wasn’t using his heart enough.

‘What did you mean?’ Yuuri said, when Viktor didn’t reply. ‘When you said she was saying what she saw. What did she do?’

Viktor looked away, which struck Yuuri first of all. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, which struck Yuuri second. When did Viktor ever hide from anything? When was anything ever that meaningful that it couldn’t be spoken?

‘All right,’ said Yuuri, because he wasn’t sure how far he could push, and he didn’t want to test it now. ‘And what did she mean about the Federation?’

Viktor let out a low breath. The snow creaked between his boots as he rocked back on his heels. His breathing was coming out in soft white billows of hot air.

‘I thought we were past keeping secrets,’ Yuuri said.

‘The Federation offered me a job,’ said Viktor, before another silence could settle. ‘They wanted me to be on their committee. To be their ISU representative. I turned it down.’

‘What?’ Yuuri said, dumb. ‘But that’s—that’s _incredible_ , Viktor. Why didn’t you…’

Viktor’s look said it all: _Because it’s in Russia. Because you’re here. Because of you._ ‘I didn’t want it, anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s too… It’s too _bureaucratic_.’

‘You turned it down because of me,’ said Yuuri. That’s what he was really saying. It wasn’t that political. It had been sentiment. Yuuri felt the shock of it tremor through him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because it wasn’t important.’

‘It was important. You know it was.’

Viktor shrugged. Sometimes Yuuri caught Mari and Viktor passing a cigarette between one another, leaning against the wall of the inn. Viktor looked like he wanted to do that now. His hair was growing dark as the snow fell, settling on the collar of his long coat.

‘You told me you didn’t have old friends—’

‘I wouldn’t really call Sascha a friend. I was being polite at the time.’

‘—and you spoke to her like a lot had happened between you two. But you won’t tell me what. And it makes me—I’ve just realised I don’t even know much about you.’

Viktor’s eyes fell shut. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t do this.’

Yuuri clenched his jaw, and looked past him. Yuuri could see the little wooden trellis archway, across the expanse of darkening snow and ice, and through the curved row of trees, boughs heavy with snow. The arch was lit up with a wrapping of fairy lights, and it led to the small bathhouse for changing and washing; the _onsen_ lay out beyond it. Yuuri thought he could see the heat from the water curling up in the air.

‘I’m going to visit Phichit for the weekend,’ he told Viktor. His voice sounded far off. ‘He asked me yesterday if I wanted to see him. He’s visiting family in Taiwan.’

‘You’re leaving me here.’

Yuuri held back the choked sound. _Don’t do that_ , he wanted to say. ‘They’re staying here for the weekend. _Talk_ to them, Viktor. This could… This could be something.’

‘You’ve said you’ll help them.’

‘I’m going to ask Phichit. You’re too… biased,’ he settled on. Sascha had told Yuuri what Viktor clearly wouldn’t. And Yuuri hated her a bit for it, but she had barely been twelve years old. He wanted to tell Viktor that it was okay. That it wasn’t something that mattered anymore. That they had each other and wasn’t that enough?

But Viktor hadn’t told him that truth—Sascha had. And Yuuri thought Viktor might hate him a little bit if he told him any of that at all.

‘You’re going to Taiwan for a weekend to ask him about something that is going to end everything you’ve worked for,’ said Viktor. ‘How about I give you some advice and save you the trip: _Don’t_. Don’t do what they say. Don’t throw what we’ve achieved this year away.’

‘What if I don’t mind?’

The blue in Viktor’s eyes was startling, and they didn’t waver. ‘You said you wanted to keep skating. But don’t do it like this.’

‘Does it matter how I do it? I don’t want the titles, Viktor. That’s not what this is for.’

‘You’ll never step foot in an arena after this.’

‘I’ll know I’ve done this, though. Think what message this could give. And I’ll still have Ice Castle. I’ll have you.’ He swallowed down the lump. ‘Will I have you?’

 _I will,_ Yuuri thought, watching the way Viktor’s eyes did waver now, tightening at the edges. The corners of his lips pulled down, like he was in pain. _Please say I will._

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Yuuri, what you’re asking me... I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t know.’

Yuuri stared at him. And then he nodded, slowly, turning away. ‘Yeah,’ he said. Viktor didn’t call him back, just stood outside as snow fell and froze against his skin, head bowed, hair growing wet. And Yuuri felt his heart clench with the idea that Viktor wasn’t sure if he could choose his career over him.

 _It’s okay to pursue your dreams,_ Minako always told him. _Don’t wait for anyone’s approval. It’s okay to want your career._ Who exactly did that apply to now?

When, Yuuri wondered, was he going to be able to thank Viktor for his honesty?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**  
>  _Skol'ko zim_ / Сколько зим / is a way of saying 'long time no see!' but it's more, 'how many winters has it been?' I liked this version more.  
>  _Chto ty zdies dielaiesh?_ / Что ты здесь делаешь? / 'What the hell are you doing here?'  
>  _Hajimemashite. Dozo yoroshiku._ / はじめまして どぞ よろしく / 'Hello, it's nice to meet you. Please look after me.'  
>  _Trakhat posledstviya!_ / трахать последствия! / 'Fuck the consequences.' For this I had to rely on a translating tool, so I'm not sure if this is 100% correct. Please correct me if there's a better phrase!
> 
> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153380096319/excelsior-419
> 
>  
> 
> Please click [Kudos ❤], leave a comment, or reblog on Tumblr if you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was reading [this](http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/02/17/pairs_skating_sochi_no_same_sex_figure_skating_pairs_are_definitely_not.html) article today about same-sex skating couples, in reference to Sochi. It's really interesting the way male-female skating pairs (and their routines) are so rigidly heterosexual; the article notes how, for example, an American audience is so aware of how the message pair skating routines are trying to convey just doesn't fit with the mixed dynamic of today's society, and how something within the figure skating authorities and institutions needs to change...
> 
> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

_What are you doing right now?_

Yuuri stared at his phone, and then, slowly, he tapped out a message.

_Sitting in Phichit’s aunt’s café._

He snapped a short video of it: the quaint fairy lights, the soft Christmas music, the rustic tables decorated with fake poinsettias and the chalkboard menus behind the counter. December’s were mild in Taipei, but there was a cool, afternoon breeze creeping through the large open windows at the front of the café. Phichit’s aunt was standing behind it serving cakes and coffee, a large woman with a penchant for bulky florescent jewellery and clip-on earrings. She laughed loud and seemed to smile louder.

_It looks nice._

Yuuri took a sip of his hot chocolate. _Yeah,_ he typed. _It’s nice._

He stared at his phone. Was that it? The message came through a minute later. _I miss you._ And then: _I’m sorry._

Yuuri put his phone away in his pocket.

This wasn’t fair. Viktor wasn’t being fair. None of this was _fair._ Why did wanting to do something good mean people had to get hurt?

‘Is that Viktor?’

Yuuri looked up as Phichit sat down opposite him, resting his coffee cup on the table and running a hand through his dark hair. His eyes, always seeming to smile, were not smiling. Yuuri had cried when Phichit picked him up from the airport the day before.

‘He said he misses me.’

Phichit raised his cup to his mouth, dark eyes still. ‘Maybe some distance is good,’ he said. ‘You’ve been together for a year. Every day.’

‘Because he’s my coach.’

Phichit pulled a face. ‘I don’t text Ciao Ciao to tell him I miss him when I’m away.’

They shared a grimace, which didn’t last long, because Phichit’s look was too set. He used to give him this look in Detroit, when Yuuri was feeling sad, when he’d walk into their shared room and Yuuri would give him a smile that shook at the edges.

 _Tell me,_ the look said. _Tell me and we can work through it._

‘I haven’t told you everything,’ said Yuuri.

‘I didn’t think you had.’

Yuuri drank the rest of his hot chocolate. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and let his fingers lock together tight in his lap. He hadn’t slept the night before, the sheets heavy, the room too warm, and he felt raw and open now. His throat was sore, his eyes bruised. This felt like every time before a competition, and somehow worse. Viktor wasn’t there to pull him through.

He told Phichit now, with careful, quiet revelation, about Sascha and Hatsuyo. About their offer. About who Sascha was—who she had been when she was with Viktor at Sambo. Yuuri told him everything he wasn’t supposed to, and Phichit stared at him.

‘How would you—I mean—Is that even _possible_?’

‘I don’t know,’ Yuuri admitted. ‘I’ve never pair skated before.’  

‘That’s not even what I—Yuuri… I said I’d support you through anything but…’

‘You think I’m mad.’

Phichit rubbed his eyes with his forefingers. He was shaking his head. ‘I think this is something you would do.’ His laughter was short and choked. ‘Of course it’s something you would do.’

‘Hatsuyo was right. Sascha was right. Viktor and I made a difference in Beijing. A Russian and a Japanese man kissing in public? You saw how much support that gained. How people _celebrated_ it.’

‘And people hated you for it too,’ Phichit reminded him quietly. The time between China and Russia had been a crazed thing, Twitter and every other social media platform exploding with it. #Viktuuri had trended. And yet for every cry of support, every LGBT celebration, every well-wishing from skaters globally, every rainbow banner that flew high at the Final, there had been the darker messages, the articles in the Russian newspapers, the quiet ignorance of the Japanese. Somehow, they had been louder.

 _Don’t listen to them_ , Viktor had said. _They don’t understand._

But Yuuri couldn’t take out his earphones for this. He couldn’t hide away from it. And no matter how much Viktor told him to just look at him, get lost in those intense, pellucid eyes, to know that Viktor was there and that was enough, it _hadn’t_ been enough.

‘It’s easy for you,’ he’d said. ‘You don’t care what people think.’

Viktor had stared at him. ‘Easy,’ he’d said. ‘ _Der’mo_ , Yuuri _…_ ’ He’d shaken his head. ‘The minute you start thinking I’m more human than you think I am… I dread the day that realisation hits you.’

He looked at Phichit. Phichit was looking back at him like he could see everything he was thinking and remembering. ‘It’s worth the risk,’ he said. ‘What have I got to lose?’

‘Everything.’

Even said like that, Yuuri wasn’t hearing the real truth of it. Maybe it didn’t mean that much to him. Maybe he didn’t want it to.

Phichit took in a deep breath. ‘So you’ll… pair skate,’ said Phichit, playing with the words. ‘With Hatsuyo.’

‘We’ll skate in the Four Continents so we can qualify for the Worlds. Viktor and Sascha would have skated the Europeans.’

‘You know about similar pairs? They’re same sex pairs who—’

‘Aren’t acknowledged by the ISU and aren’t allowed to compete in ISU competitions. They’re invalidated.’

‘And what about the Japan Nationals? You’ve just missed them. How are you—’

‘Hatsuyo and her partner got through. But he’s injured, so she’s been allowed to select a replacement by the JSF. Sascha’s partner has pulled out, and the Russian Federation are allowing her to do the same.’

‘How are you even going to get to 4CC?’ Phichit’s eyes were tight. Yuuri realised this wasn’t just some fantastical venture for civil rights. Phichit was _frightened_ for him. Phichit was watching him throwing everything out on some insane whim that could crash and burn before they even left the ground, and Phichit wasn’t sure if there would be any pieces to pick up afterwards.

 _I’m not sure I can help put you back together,_ his look said.

‘You’re a new team. You don’t have the qualifications. You need a good TES from an international competition.’

‘The International Challenge is in March. We could qualify for the Four Continents with that.’

Phichit choked on his coffee. ‘ _March_? That’s barely three _months_.’

‘And if we fail, the Nebelhorn Cup is in September.’

‘Better,’ Phichit said. His voice was strained. _Better_ , apparently, was a loose term. There were too many questions: What if Sascha and Viktor got through and Yuuri and Hatsuyo didn’t? What if Sascha never found a partner and Viktor didn’t change his mind? What if someone started guessing what might be happening?

‘If we can get good scores at both or one, we can get to the 4CC. If we can get good scores at 4CC we can get to the Worlds. Hatsuyo said the JPF will consider that. And they’d send Hatsuyo anyway; they just need to see that _I_ can skate with her. I’ve just won the Grand Prix Final—’

‘As a single skater, Yuuri. Can you even do a _lift_?’

‘Hatsuyo’s barely five foot.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

Yuuri swallowed. ‘I went from sixth to first in a year. I can learn.’

‘This isn’t the same thing and you know it.’

‘You think I can’t do it,’ Yuuri said.

‘I think—God, I don’t underestimate your determination. But I just… But the chance that you’ll fail before you even start is too…’

‘Viktor thinks it’s a bad idea.’

‘Well, _yeah_ ,’ Phichit said. His eyes became sad. ‘I understand why you fought now. I’m sorry. But this is a _big thing_ you’re asking for from him.’

‘I know. I know it is. I just thought, maybe, that he’d want me more.’

‘Yuuri…’

‘I know. It’s not about me. It wouldn’t even be about us. We’d be doing it for Sascha and Hatsuyo. We’d be doing it for _everyone._ But I still…’

‘You still hoped,’ Phichit said, soft.

They were Sascha’s words. And now they were Phichit’s words. Yuuri realised what they meant, and he was realising how much this rested on Viktor. What skater would risk so much to partner with Sascha if Viktor didn’t? What did it even say about who Viktor could be that they’d even hoped for him to say yes in the first place? They’d hoped, resoundingly, because they thought there was something in him worth hoping for.

‘What do I do, Phichit?’ Yuuri whispered. His voice was thick and choked. He didn’t want to keep crying. He didn’t want this to keep hurting. It made it all too possible, and he felt the realness of it when he said, ‘I could lose him.’

Phichit looked down at his hands, wrapped around his coffee cup. His words were soft, and tentative. ‘I’ve never seen you happier than before you met him,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know if I was happier in Beijing to win gold or to see you look like you did. I’ve never seen you so like _yourself_.’

‘You think I should tell the girls no.’

‘No, that’s… I think you need to think about what’s important for yourself. Viktor makes you happy, but this could make you happy too. Maybe. But it’s going to be _difficult._ I think you need to think about if it’s worth it. Because, really, is he going to give up on you if you say yes? Is that the sort of person Viktor is?’

Yuuri shook his head. He didn’t know. He knew what he was asking of Viktor. But the small, selfish part of him knew that Viktor had opened up some part of him that year, and the girls had only made a pinhole.

‘I can’t lose him,’ Yuuri said. ‘Whatever—whatever happens. I can’t lose him.’

‘Okay.’

‘But I want this too.’

‘Okay,’ Phichit said, and this time with less certainty.  

Yuuri felt his phone buzz in his pocket. His heart skittered. _I still miss you_ , it was going to say.

‘I just—have to hope he wants me more.’

‘He will.’

‘You think?’

Phichit hesitated. This wasn’t a promise he could make. Instead he said, ‘I think we don’t give him enough credit sometimes.’

Yuuri thought he was going to laugh. It felt easier to do. ‘I think that stupid grey head of his has been given _quite_ enough credit.’

Phichit’s mouth was curving. ‘It is a bit big.’

‘So big.’

‘It seems to inflate when he wears all those fancy coats.’

‘Maybe it’s a Russian thing.’

Phichit laughed. ‘Maybe.’

The laughter, eventually, faded. Yuuri swallowed. He didn’t think it was supposed to be like this. Waiting for him to duck through the door to the café. To say he got held up by someone who wanted a selfie. To start swearing in his strange, hard language because the taxi was late. To come up behind him and ask him to _guess who?_ To kiss him—to make him feel whole.

‘I miss him, Phichit,’ Yuuri said, gritting his teeth, putting a hand over his eyes to hide them. This wasn’t about feeling Viktor’s absence while he was a three-hour flight away. This wasn’t about a weekend apart. This was about how they challenged each other; how they anchored each other. This was about knowing if Yuuri messed this up, which was going to be so _easy_ to do, Viktor might not be there to help him up. Holding back a shuddering sob, clutching at his stomach, again, ‘ _I miss him_.’

Phichit’s words were whisper soft. ‘I know you do, Yuuri,’ he said. ‘I know you do.’

 

* * *

 

‘Yuri? Are you there?’

‘Are you going to swear at me again?’

Viktor gripped the phone tighter. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for what I said, Yuri. I was angry. I shouldn’t have—taken it out on you.’

There was a silence on the other end. Viktor didn’t know what to do with Yuri’s silences; he tended to fill them with whatever he could, and the change was jarring.

‘I’m sorry,’ Viktor said again.

He could hear Yuri breathing slowly through the phone. ‘Yakov shouts at me,’ he said, weirdly tentative. ‘When I do things wrong. Lilia hits me sometimes, but not hard.’

‘Yuri—’

‘But they never mean it. They just want me to get better. And I do.’ There was a pause. ‘But I’ve never been shouted at someone just because they could. There’s nothing fair about that. That wasn’t fair.’

Viktor ran a gloved hand over his face. He was getting used to leaning against a wall around the back of the inn, hidden in shadows beneath the lip of the roof. People drifting to the baths through the archway further down the path couldn’t see him here. The only one who ever seemed to notice was Mari. She stood there now, smoking a cigarette under the awning of the doorway.

Her gaze should have been unnerving, but instead it was lazy and unconcerned as she passed him her cigarette every couple of minutes. Simply, she didn’t care.

‘I was angry because Yuuri and I argued.’

‘Good.’

Viktor clenched his teeth. ‘You’re making me wish I hadn’t said sorry now.’

‘You’re shit at apologies anyway.’

‘What did I tell you about swearing?’

Yuri’s laugh was hard and short like a dog bark, and Viktor felt himself frown as he heard it. Why couldn’t he laugh like every other kid, wild and unrestrained, bubbling out from some small part, bright part of him that must still have lingered? Surely it must have existed.

‘Don’t try to be my _father,_ Viktor,’ Yuri said. Viktor could _hear_ the curl of his lip, the look of disgust, perpetually unimpressed by everything. ‘I don’t need two disappointments.’

‘I wouldn’t dare,’ Viktor said calmly. ‘You’re a nightmare child.’

‘I’m not a child.’

Mari was holding out the cigarette. Viktor took a slow, long drag, and passed it back to her waiting fingers. He told himself it wasn’t really smoking if he didn’t have the whole thing. It reminded him of cold nights at Sambo and, when he was older, getting swiped across the head by Yakov because he was older but apparently still stupid enough to get caught.

‘Sure, you’re not,’ he said into the phone, because it was what Yuri wanted to hear.

Yuri, little Yuri Plisetsky, didn’t realise that because he was skating with the seniors that it didn’t make him any less a pretty blond youth with a sharp, untrained tongue and a temper to be tempered. But Viktor couldn’t blame him too much. He thought he had been the same, once.

 _No, you hadn’t_ , a voice whispered. _You were toying with people before you could lace your skates properly._

‘What did you argue about?’

Viktor pressed his lips together. ‘Not sure that’s your business, Yuri.’

‘Sure, it isn’t.’

Viktor sighed. ‘Yuuri wants to do something stupid—’

‘I told you he was as dense as a—’

‘—and I said some stupid things in return.’

‘You’re better off without him,’ Yuri muttered. ‘He’s only made things difficult for you.’

Viktor propped himself against the wall. His inspected his nails with his free hand. ‘How do you suppose that, then?’

‘He just has.’

Viktor made a contemplative sound. ‘He just has.’

‘He won the Grand Prix and made it all about him—’

‘Which tends to happen when you win a gold.’

‘—and didn’t even give you proper credit. He’d be nothing without you. His routine was all yours. He’s putting you down and you don’t even know it.’

Viktor could have denied it, but he wasn’t sure what good it was going to do. There was a Russian proverb he thought of often: _Be swift to hear, and slow to speak._ He didn’t think Yuri would ever quite master that one.

‘So if you’d win,’ he said instead, ‘you would have credited everything to Lilia and Yakov?’

He could almost hear Yuri’s thoughts stuttering. Viktor ran his thumb across his lower lip. Apparently, there wasn’t going to be an answer.

‘Well,’ said Viktor.

‘Fuck off,’ said Yuri.

Viktor squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. ‘This was supposed to lift my conscience,’ he said. ‘I was supposed to apologise and feel better for it.’

Because this was the only thing he could say and mean right now. This was the only thing he could think about and allow himself to feel. Anything more—anything bigger, and he wasn’t sure he could take it.

He always thought Yuuri had been an anchor; a tether that kept him grounded and stopped him floating out among the stars. But Viktor realised now that perhaps he was the anchor, and Yuuri was the one that pulled him up, kicking and struggling, keeping their heads above the water and trying to keep them afloat. Viktor felt like he was drowning.

‘Sorry to be such a _glaring_ disappointment to you,’ said Yuri, through the phone.

‘You’re not a disappointment,’ Viktor told him, knowing that he would lose something if he didn’t say it fast enough. ‘You never have been.’

‘You made me feel like it on Friday.’

Viktor let his eyes close for a moment. He didn’t even look at Mari as he took the cigarette this time. ‘I told you that wasn’t—it wasn’t you.’

He could hear Yuri’s silence. His thoughtful quietness. He could picture him, pressed small and loose-limbed into the corner of a sofa. He could see the clouded green eyes, the lip he worried between his teeth. When no one was watching, Yuri looked like a boy again, epicene, the soft beauty of unblemished youth.

‘I hope you…’ Yuri stopped. His voice had been soft, a tentative thing that matched how Viktor imagined he looked in a moment of unwatched, unobserved truth. But, like he could hear himself, like he could tell someone was catching an unguarded glimpse of him, his voice hardened. ‘You two should sort your shit out. You’ll—you’ll both just be _embarrassing_ otherwise, all right?’

There was a sudden sound of heavy, suspicious silence.

‘Yuri?’

Viktor brought his phone away from his ear. The call had closed, the screen now settled on the background image: Yuuri asleep on the hotel bed the night after the Grand Prix. He’d been too tired to take off his shoes. Viktor blinked.

‘He hung up on me,’ he said in English.

The little shit.

‘I suppose you don’t get that often, do you?’ Mari said. Her English wasn’t as clear as Yuuri’s, but she spent enough time speaking with tourists and translating her parents’ website that she could carry a conversation well.

‘Not often.’ Not at all.

She snorted a soft sound like a laugh, like it was all she had the energy for. ‘If _proshu prosheniya_ means I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘then I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologise more in your life.’

Viktor gave her a bland look. ‘You have a good ear.’

She stared at him, and her eyebrows rose.

‘I can be sorry,’ he said.

‘There’s a difference between being it, saying it, and meaning it.’

Viktor stared back. ‘What have you heard?’

‘Other than that Yuuri suddenly packs his backs and jets off to Taipei the minute your old friends come into town?’

‘They’re not my—’ Viktor took a slow breath. ‘He went to see Phichit.’

‘Convenient.’

‘We—we had an argument, _ladno?_ ’

‘Arguments usually don’t end with a flight to another country. _Ladno?_ ’

‘It was a mutual _misunderstanding—_ if you’re saying that this was all on me, Mari.’

‘I wasn’t saying anything.’

‘Good.’

‘Great.’ She blinked at him behind a puff of cigarette smoke. ‘Are you going to break up with him?’

‘I—We haven’t—What?’ Viktor felt his heart trying to break out of his chest. He didn’t want to have this conversation with her—with his sister. ‘It was—it was _nothing_ , Mari. We’re working through it.’

‘ _Will I have you_ ,’ Mari said. Her face was lax and expressionless, only the smallest tightening at her eyes. But they were Yuuri’s words. ‘And you said, _I don’t know._ ’

‘You were listening.’

She shrugged. There was, apparently, no point in denying it. And clearly she didn’t care.

Viktor ran his hands through his hair. He didn’t want—didn’t _need this_ right now. ‘You would be the same if you knew what he wanted to do. He’s going to throw everything away.’

‘Does it matter? I’m his _sister_ , Viktor. You’re his _lover_. We’re supposed to let the ones we care about do stupid things so we can let them learn. We’re not supposed to abandon them and let them ruin themselves. We’re _supposed_ to stand with the safety net to catch them at the end of it and have the decency not to say _I told you so_.’

‘It could ruin me too,’ he whispered.

‘Well big _fuck_ , Viktor,’ she cried, eyes wider. It was the most emphatic he’d ever seen her. ‘What’s going to be the thing that lasts? You’re a retired skater, Viktor. You haven’t _got_ anything to defend anymore. But what you have with Yuuri—that’s going to last forever.’

‘I don’t want to lose him.’

‘Then you need to decide what you want more.’

‘And if I didn’t choose him?’

Viktor had had people look at him like this before: Yakov, the ISU committees. His father. But there was something about this look that made a shiver creep down the back of his spine. Mari, complacent, unconcerned Mari, looked at him now like she would be willing to commit a sin for this.

‘I don’t know what’s really going on with you and Yuuri,’ she said. Her voice sounded like it usually did, lazy and quiet, and this probably made it worse. ‘But if you break his heart badly enough I’ll break your legs.’

Viktor swallowed. ‘Noted.’

 

* * *

 

Yuuri took the early flight back on Monday afternoon. Minako picked him up from the airport without asking questions and played Slade’s _Greatest Hits_ over the stereo. Her clothes smelled of beer.

‘I spilled some on me at breakfast. I’m safe to drive.’

‘You had a beer for breakfast.’

‘It’s three days until Christmas. It’s acceptable.’

‘You’ve had _sake_ for breakfast before. It wasn’t Christmas then.’

Minako paused. ‘Sustenance,’ she said.

They arrived into Hasetsu at nine o’clock. The town seemed quiet and blanketed in a fresh wave of snow, blank from footprints and tire tracks. The river was frozen and curling with steam, and the air had the acrid smell of smoke fires and the promise of hot pot and candied nuts.

The inn was busy when Minako dropped him off, and he crept around to the back staircase, lost among the loud bunches of locals and tourists spending Christmas in Japan. Upstairs, the doors were all slid shut, lamplight silhouetted through the thinner parts of the wood.

He felt his pulse in his throat as passed Viktor’s room. There was a light on inside. He didn’t stop as he carried on down to his own bedroom. It was dark, and he dropped his rucksack by the end of the bed, feet heavy, head heavy.

He’d spent the morning walking around Taipei with Phichit. They had taken his nieces to the aquarium and bought them waffles, and by lunch time they were sitting in the airport’s Starbucks and watching the departure boards.

‘It’ll be okay when you’re back,’ Phichit told him. ‘Just talk to him. You’ll find a middle ground.’

‘What if he says no?’

‘Then decide if you can live with him saying no. Or decide if you don’t live with him at all.’

Yuuri had to listen, and let him tell him this. It was why Yuuri had come; to hear this. He just wished it didn’t have to be so hard.

He moved further into his room now. He’d slept alone on Friday night, Viktor down the hall from him. His bed had felt cold and too big. He stumbled over a pile of clothes on the floor, hands outstretched to catch himself on the bed, and instead the mattress beneath him was—hard, muscular, fleshy.

He heard a groan.

Yuuri stared as Viktor pulled himself up, eyes bleary, hair mussed in the darkness. He was still dressed, like he’d stumbled in here too and fallen down. Like he’d pressed his face into the pillow because it smelled of him, wrapped in Yuuri’s scent, and fallen asleep. The shutters were drawn, but somehow Yuuri could see the glint of his blue eyes staring back at him. They widened.

‘Yuuri,’ he breathed. ‘I didn’t—you weren’t—’

‘I came back early,’ Yuuri said. His voice sounded distant. He didn’t expect this. He was supposed to go to sleep and start anew in the morning. ‘You didn’t make a mistake.’

Viktor was staring at him. ‘You should have told me,’ he said, voice thick. ‘I would have picked you up. You know I would.’

‘I didn’t want to sit in a car with you.’

Quietness. The faint sound of music and glasses clinking downstairs.

‘Sit,’ said Viktor.

 _I don’t want to,_ Yuuri thought. _If I sit, I’ll touch you and I won’t want to stop._

But he sat. Viktor’s fingers were soft and warm on his cheek. The touch made him close his eyes.

‘I thought you might have gone back to Moscow.’

‘Why would I do that?’

Yuuri shrugged and looked away. Viktor’s hand fell into the space between them on the bed.

‘I felt like you were gone a year,’ said Viktor. ‘I thought I’d wake up and you would be here, fallen asleep with your glasses still on. I thought you’d—you’d smile at me and tell me good morning and it would be okay. And instead you were in Taiwan. And instead they were here.’

‘Did you speak with them?’

‘There was nothing to say.’

‘Viktor—’

‘Two days was enough to make me realise how empty my life would be without you,’ Viktor said. ‘Without skating, without someone to coach, I have nothing. Without someone here to love and spend my life with and laugh with, I have even less.’

‘You can’t have less than nothing.’

‘I can. I did.’

‘It was two days,’ Yuuri said, knowing as he said it that it had felt like more. That it had felt hollow and wanting. Time didn’t matter—the absence of it on principle had hurt enough. A year together, and then nothing. It hadn’t been jarring, and dissociating; something, suddenly, had been _missing_. He’d felt ill for it.

‘Did it feel like two days for you?’ Viktor said. ‘Was it nothing for you?’

Yuuri put his head in his hands. Viktor knew the answer to that already. ‘What are you doing, Viktor? Are you trying to see if I’ve changed my mind? Why don’t you just _ask_ me.’

‘Have you changed your mind?’

‘No,’ Yuuri said, voice trembling. ‘Have you?’

‘Yes.’

Yuuri lifted his head. ‘What?’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘You’ll… skate with Sascha?’ he said. But that wasn’t what he really wanted to ask.

‘I’ll support you and Hatsuyo. I’ll go along with it. But I’m not doing more than that.’ Yuuri could see him clearer now, the shadows had started to melt away. The way he was looking a Yuuri made him feel bare.

‘Sascha will be without a partner,’ Yuuri said quietly. ‘None of this will work if she doesn’t have a partner.’

‘I don’t think that’s my problem. She’ll find someone else. She always finds a way.’            

Yuuri swallowed. ‘And what if you get caught up in it? Isn’t it inevitable?’

‘If I get caught then it’s because I’ve chosen to. The ISU can’t say I’ve done anything else. No one can even say this is happening unless you get to the Worlds.’

‘You don’t think we will.’

Viktor just looked at him. ‘Do you know how much this is hanging on, Yuuri? How many _ifs_ and _maybes_. It’s not just about turning up and skating. You have to re-write the way you skate; it’s not about yourself anymore. It’s about how you move with someone else. You’ll have to spend a year on this. And then you’ll have to get through two, maybe three competitions to get anywhere _near_ the Worlds.’

‘You said you didn’t speak to them.’

‘I said there was nothing much to say.’

He had. Always good with his words. It was why Yuuri let him speak for him in interviews most of the time, not because he knew what to say so much as he knew what other people wanted to hear. Until those moments where he didn’t—where he got it wrong. Lately, that seemed to be happening a lot.

Yuuri wondered if Viktor had noticed. He wondered why it was happening. He wondered if it was how things were going to be from now on, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted the Viktor who said the things he wanted to hear, or the Viktor who didn’t know what he was saying and got things wrong. It made him wonder if there was something in between. Something in him that was balanced. He wondered if that was maybe, what they were trying to find out. Trial and error. So far, lots of errors. He didn’t think he minded; the thought of getting it right, eventually, was breath-taking.

‘What?’ Yuuri said, because he realised Viktor was staring at him in a certain _way._

‘You’re so beautiful,’ said Viktor, in the silence. ‘Sometimes I forget how it feels to look at you. I’m surprised by it every time.’

Yuuri stared at him, the hair that looked white sometimes. Sometimes it appeared a fine shade of lilac, like it had leeched the colour from a lavender. Sometimes his eyes were the struggling blue of a darkening night sky, and others they were as light as a frozen lake reflecting winter mornings. Yuuri could make out the flush across the bridge of his nose.

‘Beautiful,’ Yuuri murmured.

A beat of blushing silence.

Yuuri allowed Viktor to lean in, warm lips parting his own, cold and chapped. He allowed Viktor to rest long fingers on his nape, on the ridge of his spine, offering a slow circling caress. The kiss was long and deep and searching, and it was true. Viktor’s tongue slid into Yuuri’s mouth, and then suddenly it was a changing thing—charged, hands grasping, scrabbling, something burning in the pit of their stomachs. It was a kiss that Yuuri could forget himself in.

When they broke away, Viktor’s breath was trembling across his skin. Yuuri pressed his forehead into Viktor’s shoulder and tried to keep himself still and quiet.

‘You’re shaking,’ Viktor murmured, trailing fingers over Yuuri’s back, slipping them beneath the hem of his shirt, travelling up and across his spine and shoulder blades that felt, suddenly, on fire. Yuuri felt like he was burning.

‘You—make me—I can’t—’

‘Tell me,’ Viktor whispered.

Yuuri shook his head into Viktor’s shoulder. ‘You’re going to do this for me. You’re not leaving.’

‘I’m doing what I can—for us. I’m not leaving.’

Yuuri let Viktor’s hand creep across his sides until he shivered. It brushed across his torso, stomach tightening, crept further down. Yuuri’s gasp was strangled.

He put a hand on Viktor’s arm. Viktor’s hand stayed there, just resting beneath his navel, so close. If his fingers went further they’d be touching. Yuuri could feel a keen building in his throat.

‘No?’ said Viktor.

‘I’m tired,’ Yuuri murmured. Had to say. Everything had suddenly become too much. ‘Soon.’

The flash of frustration across Viktor’s face, so brief, was wonderfully fond. _Soon_ , it was saying, laughing a little.

‘It’s my birthday in three days,’ Viktor said. Christmas Day. He’d be twenty-eight. ‘Is that soon enough?’

Something curled with fear and excitement in Yuuri’s stomach. Three days. ‘Do I have to get you a present too?’

Viktor nudged him. ‘You’re enough,’ he said. ‘This is always enough.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
>  Translations  
>  **  
> _Proshu prosheniya_ / прошу прощения / 'I am so/deeply/very sorry.'  
>  _Ladno_ / ладно / 'Okay?' or 'All right?' or 'Enough', etc.  
> 
> 
> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153450294629/excelsior-519
> 
> Please click [Kudos ❤], comment, and/or share the fic with others if you enjoyed!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

**| Yuuri |**

It was Christmas morning, and Yuuri was on the rink.

Festive choral pieces were playing out faint across the ice, hushed and echoed, as Yuuri warmed up. He rubbed his palms down the front of his thighs, and carried out a few drills. Hatsuyo, standing across from him, was doing the same.

Hatsuyo had family living in Tokyo, so they had been staying there in the days after they left Hasetsu. They came back to the small town yesterday, hiring out a room in the inn.

‘It’ll be expensive to pay for that long,’ Yuuri told her, hand on the back of his neck. It was good for his mother, but it couldn’t have been good to Hatsuyo’s wallet. A studio in the town would have been cheaper to rent.

‘I have money,’ was all she said, and Yuuri had to realise that this was all very real: this was going to happen. Sascha and Hatsuyo were going to live here and train here. They were going to try for the Worlds. They were going to try to change social history. They were going to try to change figure skating.

This was all to say that, really, they were all mad.

Yuuri watched Hatsuyo’s exercises; she was small, her movements contained and precise as she warmed her muscles. Viktor, standing idly by, was watching her closely. Yuuri was too conscious of his gaze; it turned shrewd when they were skating, eyes narrowed and focused. His eyes hardened, and for moment Yuuri wasn’t able to see into him.

‘Perhaps the two of you should simply skate a routine together,’ Viktor said.

‘Great idea, Viktor,’ said Sascha. She was a little way off, her arms folded, feet apart. ‘Let’s have Yuuri break his back and Hatsuyo crack her head open on the ice. Merry Christmas, everyone.’

Viktor rolled his eyes. ‘We should see what they can do rather than starting from the beginning, Sascha dear. We don’t have the time to waste.’

Hatsuyo and Yuuri shared a look as they stretched. So this was how it was going to be.

‘Yuuri,’ said Hatsuyo. Viktor and Sascha continued bickering. ‘Have you seen any of Irina Rodnina’s performances?’

‘A few,’ he said.

Hatsuyo nodded. ‘Then you know about her partner, Aleksandr Zaitsev?’

Yuuri bit his lip. ‘Vaguely?’

‘He partnered when he was twenty. Practically a nobody in the figure skating world. They won their first world championship together after nine months.’

‘Right,’ said Yuuri.

‘They practiced their lifts off ice; they ran; they skated every morning and evening. They had to put everything into it.’

Yuuri understood. None of this was different from what he had already achieved—what he had already spent a year doing. Only now it was with someone else; now it was with a girl he knew too little of, and he found himself wishing it would be Viktor. He understood, partly, why she and Sascha wanted this so much, and it was not about making a statement or a social comment or trying to make something _good_ happen. It was being able to skate with someone you loved because you loved them, and not being told no.

‘I know Gordeeva and Grinkov’s free skate _Moonlight Sonata_ routine,’ said Yuuri, knowing that was all he could offer right now. He felt too much like a fish out of water; he didn’t know the routines. He barely knew the skaters. Sascha and Viktor had fallen quiet, and the blanket of uncertainty was settling over them all. Yuuri felt it like a second skin, and he didn’t know how to pull it off.

‘Don’t do the lifts,’ said Viktor, as they skated into the centre of the rink. He and Sascha were leaning back on their elbows on the perimeter, both fair-haired and pale and dressed in winter whites and greys. They were a marvel to look at, but Yuuri couldn’t look at them—he had to look at Hatsuyo instead.

They skated without music; they had only breathing and the cut of blades and _Jingle Bells_ playing in round over the tannoy.

When Yuuri started, he realised with a wash of relief that this, on the surface, was the same. It was skating; it was a set of blades sharp beneath his feet; it was poise and movement and gliding. It was a high chin, a long neck. Mostly, they mirrored, and Yuuri knew this. He knew the spins and the jumps, the Salchows and the toe loops and the flips, and they were challenged only by keeping time with one another. He knew it, and for a few moments he felt like this was something he might be able to _do_.

The spins were not hard; Hatsuyo was feather light, and she was sure where Yuuri was not.

 _No lifts,_ Viktor had said, but the throws were gentle pushes and Hatsuyo spun in the air with a breathless ease, her landings fluid. Yuuri followed her movements and let himself follow through with the throw. He would have watched her if he could—if he didn’t have to keep up with her, let her hold him by the hand for most of it—let her lead.

She sank down into the death spiral, which Viktor and Yuuri had tried only days ago. His blades were a slow rotation in the ice; her form was perfect as she arched.

They came to a slow, eventual stop, and Hatsuyo’s eyes were wide and full of promise.

‘That was good,’ Hatsuyo said, breathing fast. Her smile was bright as Christmas lights.

‘You threw Hatsuyo too low into the Axel, Yuuri,’ Sascha called out. Viktor looked at her.

‘You needed an extra half rotation on your triple lutz, Hatsuyo,’ said Viktor. Sascha looked at him.

Yuuri looked at Hatsuyo. ‘Is yours like that too?’

Hatsuyo nodded meekly. ‘And don’t we love them for it?’

* * *

 

They skated the routine again, slower this time. Viktor and Sascha skated parallel with them on the ice, making them pause before the pair components so they could look at their holds—so Viktor could tap on Yuuri’s ankle when it needed to rise higher, so Sascha could show Yuuri where his hands needed to fall on Hatsuyo’s waist for the loop lift—and then they took a break. Viktor and Hatsuyo went to get coffee from the small vending machine in the foyer of Ice Castle, and Yuuri sat next to Sascha while she scribbled things down on a lined notepad.

The silence between them felt odd, but if Sascha noticed, she didn’t show it.

‘It’s—good of you,’ Yuuri said. ‘To do this for her.’

Sascha didn’t look up, but the pencil stilled. ‘I’m not doing it for her,’ she said. ‘It’s more than us.’

‘Even so,’ Yuuri said. ‘It’s more than…’

_More than Viktor will do._

‘Be patient,’ Sascha said. ‘Don’t be so hard on him.’

Yuuri blinked at her. ‘Says you,’ he said. He should have regretted it, and the spite in his tone lingered, but he didn’t.

Sascha shrugged. She loosened the scarf around her throat, and unzipped the puffed white jacket she wore over dark jeans and layered shirts. Yuuri thought she was a difficult person to speak with, hard-tongued and unwilling for conversation, but he wondered if it was Viktor’s own bias against her creeping in.

‘She’s innately selfish,’ Viktor had said, when the girls had called to say they would be moving to Hasetsu. Yuuri had received the news with something like fear, or nerves at the least. Because suddenly it had been made real and imminent and all of this was going to happen. Yuuri felt it like a spike of danger, being pushed closer to a rock face that had suddenly grown sharper, the fall suddenly longer and less likely to be survived.

‘People are generally selfish,’ Yuuri had said. He knew he was; in the way he coveted Viktor, in the way he wanted him for himself.  

‘Not like her. She doesn’t—realise that the things she does hurts people. She expects _sorry_ to be enough at the end of it.’

Yuuri had watched Viktor after this—waited. But nothing came. Viktor wouldn’t look at him. He wasn’t going to reveal anything to him, and Yuuri wondered how long he was going to have to wait for it to come.

‘Hatsuyo seems sweet,’ Yuuri said.

‘She’s still a skater,’ said Viktor. ‘Don’t underestimate her.’

Yuuri wasn’t going to make that mistake. This had all been Hatsuyo’s idea, after all, and somehow she’d managed to convince Sascha to go along with it. Yuuri wasn’t going to make the mistake of assuming she was anything less than she was.

Viktor’s words lingered, and Yuuri had said, ‘Did you underestimate me?’

Viktor stared at him, eyes darting across his face. They rested, for a moment, on Yuuri’s lips. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘And I still do. You’d think I would have learned by now that I’m an unbelievable idiot when I’m this in love with you.’

Yuuri sat quietly now as Sascha scribbled down on her notebook. He saw the tell-tale abbreviations of a routine taking shape. Most he recognised, some he had to guess as pair movements. She tapped the pencil against her lip, and Yuuri wondered what she was seeing. What image was she seeing in her head? Was she seeing Yuuri and Hatsuyo in a sliding embrace, or was she seeing herself? Had she choreographed before? Was she, like Yuuri was feeling, entirely out of her depth?

She barely looked at him—her glances were cursory, measuring things, like she was trying to guess Yuuri’s height and strength by a mere flick of her grey eyes—Yuuri didn’t think she was entirely bothered by how he was feeling. He was a necessary part; a chess piece she had to move and wouldn’t mind sacrificing for her to make her way across the board.

‘You’re not afraid?’ Yuuri said. He had too many questions, and he was realising, now, that he perhaps should have had them answered before he’d said yes.

 _You think too much with your heart, Yuuri,_ Viktor had said.

Sascha sighed. She put her pencil down. ‘Afraid of what?’

‘The ISU. The Russian Federation.’

‘Everything had to come to an end anyway, Yuuri,’ Sascha said. There was no tinge of sadness in her voice, and Yuuri couldn’t help but find this remarkable. He couldn’t imagine being so blasé about the end of something that, for twenty years, had been his life. This was partly why he was doing this; so that it wouldn’t end. He saw now that, for Sascha, this was some sort of grand finale. ‘I couldn’t cling to this lifestyle forever.’

‘Cling?’ said Yuuri. ‘Is that what I’m doing?’

‘You’re starting to sound like Viktor.’

‘Because I’m daring to ask a question?’

‘Because you’re trying to start an argument with me. Don’t. We’ve got different opinions. I’m not trying to change yours, so don’t change mine.’

Yuuri frowned at her. ‘I wasn’t doing that at all,’ he said. ‘I’m trying understand why you’re so set in trying to shake the foundations of an institute that’s brought you so far.’

‘The Federation endorses me. The ISU endorses me. They haven’t put in years and days and hours of training. They’ve given me— _passage_ ,’ she said, tongue trying out the word. ‘They haven’t brought me as far as I’ve brought myself.’

‘That doesn’t explain why you hate them.’

‘I don’t _hate_ them. They’re homophobic and antiquated and I have issues with them. Hatsuyo made me see that. And I want to change that. Don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re doing this? Why you’ve said yes.’

‘No,’ Yuuri said. It wasn’t. ‘I’m doing this _for_ _people_. Not to go _against_ institutions.’

‘You have to do one to achieve another, Yuuri. People follow rules set by other people. And those rules, for us, are set by the ISU.’

Yuuri chewed the inside of his cheek. She spoke, a little, like Viktor: unyielding, with the firm tone of someone who wasn’t asking for another answer. Nothing was rhetorical. Except with Viktor, Yuuri still spoke, and it usually ended with Viktor’s eyes widening, mouth dropping a little into an ‘o’, and Yuuri realised now what that look was: underestimation, and Viktor realising he had done it again.

Yuuri rather liked that he had the power to surprise someone like Viktor, who surprised everyone.

‘Were you always a pair skater?’ Yuuri asked.

Sascha shifted on the bench. ‘I was skating single until I was seventeen. My _tata_ was furious when I switched.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ Sascha echoed, gaze settling somewhere across the rink. It was inlaid with the marks of their blades, a quiet mark of their having been there. Low grooves in the ice were the closest thing a skater could get to leaving their footprints as proof of any of it at all. ‘Now there’s a question. I suppose because it meant I had to split sponsor money and endorsements and prize funds with a partner. It wasn’t just about me anymore.’

‘Does your family still live in Romania?’

Her eyes darted to him. ‘How did you—’ And then she realised. Viktor. _Little Sascha-Sanda._ Her expression closed off a little, and Yuuri thought he knew where it had gone. She swallowed. ‘My father travelled with me a lot when I was younger during the skating seasons. But mostly I just—supported them from Russia. The cost of living is much cheaper in Romania.’

‘Is that hard?’ Yuuri asked. ‘Being away from them?’ He thought about his own five-year distance from Hasetsu. Sometimes he thought about never returning; sometimes the _nostos—_ the longing for home— was excruciating. And yet strangely neither had made him buy a plane ticket and back his bags on a whim. Things weren’t easy as that.

Sascha shrugged. ‘It can be. But so long as I was skating in Russia, they weren’t struggling. That was better.’ A smile curved her face, minuscule, and she become suddenly very pretty. Yuuri wanted to tell her to smile more, but he thought it would be like trying to offer a compliment to a panther with its jaws wide open and ready to snap. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘it’s partly why Hatsuyo and I—work so well. Most of her family lives in Canada, and when she skates for Japan she might not see them for over a year. We all make sacrifices.’

‘If you do this,’ Yuuri said quietly, not needing to say more than _this_ , ‘won’t that make things difficult? On your family?’

Sascha’s face turned away. For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer, and he thought that he probably shouldn’t have asked the question. But she did—eventually. Her voice was whisper soft.

‘It’s like I said,’ she said quietly. ‘We all make sacrifices.’

Yuuri watched her carefully. _She’s innately selfish_ , Viktor had said. And it would have been easy to say the same now, but Yuuri wasn’t sure this was anything like selfishness at all.

Eventually Hatsuyo and Viktor returned, steaming cups of coffee in hand. They sipped quietly as Sascha read out her proposed routine. Hatsuyo nodded with sporadic suggestions. Viktor interjected every second point, and Yuuri looked at the ceiling.

‘We can finish now,’ Sascha said. ‘If you want. But we’ll only be another hour.’

‘It’s Christmas Day,’ Viktor said dryly. ‘What else would I be doing?’ He looked at Yuuri, and they both knew exactly what they might be doing, and Yuuri blushed—everywhere.

* * *

 

The walk back to the inn was cold, and Viktor walked with a hand tucked into Yuuri’s back pocket. They passed convenience stores with blinking Christmas lights around the frosted windows, and passed the icy gates of the small botanical gardens. The river was frozen beneath the long bridge, and Yuuri would have run it if it hadn’t meant Viktor’s hand would have to move.

Hatsuyo and Sascha had jumped in a taxi outside Ice Castle; they were going to visit friends in Saga for the next two days, and when they returned the training would begin with full force. Yuuri was quietly grateful for their absence. The inn was already full with local travellers and less local tourists, but having them wandering about Yuuri’s home during Christmas would have felt odd. He didn’t have to share it with the guests at the inn, total strangers who paid his parents and nodded at Yuuri in the bar, but he would have had to with them. Would have had to talk to them. What would they be able to talk about other than skating?

He thought he was being ridiculous—he and Viktor hadn’t spent a year talking only about skating. Why would that be the case with the girls? But then—he realised: he and Viktor _had_ spent a year talking about skating. Of course, it was more than that. Their words had been layered and subtextual and skating was used as the front of something that was mostly deeper. But it had been the surface meaning, mostly.

Yuuri had to tell himself that there was nothing _wrong_ with that. Skating was their life, and to talk about it with one another was to _share_ their lives with each other. But why did it make his heart skitter nervously in his chest? Why did it make those small, worming doubts creep through? Those doubts that had asked if Yuuri really knew anything about Viktor beyond what he had seen and been told. He wondered, a pulsing flash of thought, if Viktor wondered the same about him.

‘Your thoughts are very loud,’ Viktor said, bemused.

Yuuri glanced at him. He realised he had been staring at the gritty, salted pavement they were walking across. They were almost at the inn. He could see the smoke curling from it; the bright lights that darted red and green beneath the awnings. The streets were quiet and the sound of music and loud chatter was spilling out from the door. It was barely 9 a.m., and Yuuri supposed most of the townspeople were still in their dressing gowns and prodding at fires in small _irori_ pits or turning up the heating a few notches.

‘I’ll tell them to be quiet,’ said Yuuri.

‘Or you could tell them to me?’

‘They’re not very interesting.’

‘I’d beg to differ,’ said Viktor. He was looking at him in that way of his, eyes roaming his face, like he was searching for something. Yuuri wished he knew what it was so he could give it to him.

‘Sascha was telling me about her family,’ said Yuuri. This wasn’t what he had been thinking about, but his conversation with her lingered. ‘I think I might understand her a little better.’

Viktor didn’t respond. His expression was quiet and distant.

‘What is it?’ said Yuuri. He reached up to brush a thumb across the arch of Viktor’s cheekbone.

‘Nothing,’ said Viktor. ‘You just—Be careful in thinking you know her. You should be spending more time with Hatsuyo, anyway. She’s your partner. Not Sascha.’

‘Am I only allowed to trust you?’ Yuuri said wryly.

‘Yes.’

Yuuri snorted. God, he was ridiculous sometimes. ‘Are you being jealous?’

Viktor gave him a bewildered look. He said, ‘I don’t exactly _do_ jealousy, Yuuri.’

‘Really.’

‘Really,’ said Viktor.

Yuuri was rolling his eyes as they toed off their shoes and walked into the inn. There were customers sitting at the low tables on the floors, with trays of spiced teas and small batches of hot spot stewing over smaller flames. Mari was behind the bar, alternating between taking a puff of her cigarette and eating out of a bowl of peeled clementines and dried fruit and nut mix. She offered them a small wave as they ducked inside, suddenly met by a wave of warm heat from the fire.

‘Where’s Mum and Dad?’ said Yuuri, heading over.

‘Merry Christmas to you too,’ she said gruffly. She was giving Viktor a certain look that Yuuri intercepted but couldn’t quite understand. ‘And they’re upstairs doing you know what.’

‘You know what,’ said Viktor, flatly. ‘I’m not sure anyone wants to know.’

‘ _Thank you_ , Viktor,’ Yuuri got out.

Viktor shrugged and offered an affable grin, but confusion lurked in his eyes. Mari seemed to be daring him to ask, which is probably why he didn’t.

‘There’s a letter for you, Viktor,’ Mari told him after she’d served another customer. She pulled a white envelope from the underside of the bar. The address was handwritten, but the stamp on it looked official.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ said Yuuri. ‘It could be a birthday card.’

‘It’s not,’ said Viktor. He was frowning, thumb brushing along the envelope in his hands, like he was weighing up the contents of it without breaking it open.

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do.’

Yuuri watched as Viktor slid it, unopened, into the front pocket of his long grey coat, and it was a while before Yuuri felt his eyes stop drifting to the slight press it made against the fabric of the pocket.

The writing had been in Cyrillic, but the stamp suggested it hadn’t been a birthday or Christmas card.

They spent a few hours in the bar, chatting with Mari, trying to stop Minako from drinking too much because it hadn’t hit noon yet, chasing the triplets through the snow outside when Yuuko and Takeshi called in with Christmas greetings.

‘How does it feel to be getting older, Viktor?’ Mari asked at one point, elbows on the bar top, cigarette dangling from her fingers.

‘It feels like getting older.’

Mari huffed, and Yuuri supposed it might have been a laugh. He could never quite tell sometimes with his sister. ‘Sucks, doesn’t it?’

Viktor, flatly: ‘You have no idea.’

Yuuri stood and wrapped his hands around Viktor’s waist from where he was sitting on the barstool, and he pressed his cheek Viktor’s shoulder blade.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Yuuri murmured. ‘Ignore her.’

He felt some tension ease from Viktor, only realising now how taught he seemed, how his words all morning had been fraught with some minute stress that Yuuri felt terrible for only realising now. He hadn’t yet hit twenty-five. Viktor was going to be thirty in a year. The thought didn’t bother him, but he wondered how it was swarming around inside Viktor’s head.

He remembered touching his hair, that absent, helpless thing that had meant nothing at the time. Hands working unconsciously and just wanting to touch.

He hadn’t expected Viktor’s reaction; he supposed it shouldn’t have surprised him. He supposed it built into the myriad of reasons why Viktor had stayed skating for so long: to give it up was to admit to some ageing defeat. It was the sickening affliction of the skating world of admitting one’s own limiting, debilitating mortality.

Yuuri’s parents appeared downstairs eventually, both wearing traditional robes. They went around to the customers and guests at the tables before making their way back to the bar, and pressing kisses onto their cheeks. Viktor seemed flustered by the gesture, not sure quite what to do with it, and he offered them a bow that was surprisingly well-done. Yuuri’s parents beamed.

‘Is it all ready?’ Yuuri asked his mother, while Viktor and his father tried to make stilted conversation in English. Viktor slipped into Russian and his father into Japanese when they couldn’t make sense of one another, as if they were hoping an even more distant language would be clearer. Mari translated with an insufferable sigh.

‘It’s ready,’ his mother said. ‘He’s going to love it.’

‘Thank you, Mum,’ said Yuuri. ‘I’m sorry I’m not—That we’re not all—’

But she shushed him, and laid a hand on his cheek. ‘He’s your life now. He’s your family. I wouldn’t want it any other way if I got to see you like this.’

Yuuri swallowed, and looked away, and she gave him a gentle push on his shoulders. He made his way back to Viktor’s side, and Viktor turned a heavy gaze onto him that made Yuuri’s stomach flip.

‘I’ve got something for you. Upstairs.’

Viktor raised an eyebrow. Yuuri’s parents were pretending not to listen. ‘Oh?’ said Viktor.

Yuuri answered by pulling him away from the bar and up the stairs. They made the familiar route to Yuuri’s bedroom, passing a few late-rising guests on the way, and Yuuri slid his bedroom door shut behind him when they were inside.

Viktor’s stillness was immediate, and the silence was heavy.

Yuuri shifted awkwardly on his feet. ‘Mum and I made most of it last night,’ he said. His words came out in a rush. ‘It was—different from what we’re used to. Russian cooking isn’t quite the same. Most of the recipes were pretty—’

‘What is this?’ Viktor said.

Yuuri rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He could feel the building flush. ‘I thought you must be missing home,’ he said, looking at the floor, and then at the low table in the middle of the room. It was covered with small plates of roasted pork and baked chicken and _pirogi_ that his mother had fun pressing shapes into. Beans and potatoes cooked in butter and garlic sat in a little dish, dressed in a green scatter of parsley.

There were small dishes of fruits and nuts and a pot of hot, sweet _kompot_ that smelled of cinnamon and rhubarb. And then there were the biscuits shaped liked reindeer that his sister had tried to help him make at three in the morning. Yuuri’s looked like strangely shaped horses. Mari’s looked… Yuuri didn’t want to know what Mari thought a reindeer was supposed to look like.

The room was bloomed in a hush of orange light, candles flickering across the surfaces: the bedside table, the chest of drawers, the boxes of old skates and older videos. There was a small Christmas tree in one corner of the room, barely waist-high, and tiny baubles in the shape of matryoshka and eggs hung from the boughs.

The smell of the food was intoxicating, and different, and Yuuri didn’t know if this is what any of it was supposed to look or smell like. He spared a glance at Viktor, a nervous cast out the corner of his eye.

Viktor was staring at him. He wasn’t saying anything. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he just kept staring.

‘What?’ Yuuri said, shifting again on his feet.

‘I—’ And then Viktor shook his head, closed his mouth.

‘I didn’t know,’ said Yuuri. ‘It’s a bit different to Japanese cooking. If—if you don’t like it I can—’

‘Yuuri?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hush. For a second, sweetheart. Please.’

Yuuri fell silent. He felt the first pricks of embarrassment creeping across his skin, and the thoughts in his head were a bombardment: He shouldn’t have done it. It was a mistake. He didn’t think about what this might mean for Viktor, what this might have provoked in him, pulled out of him. It wasn’t his to have _decided_ for Viktor and—

Viktor was moving. Most people moved because their limbs and anatomy worked a certain way; because that was their body allowed, the fitting of bones and muscle and ligaments. Viktor didn’t follow those rules—it was like they had been set aside for him. Set aside so he could move like a rush of clear water too fast to freeze, so the strength in his hands when they wrapped around Yuuri’s hands was a thing that was both pushing and pulling, and Yuuri was trapped in the current.

Yuuri’s knees hit the back of the bed, head falling against the mattress, and suddenly Viktor was over him, leaning across his thighs, long pale fingers tugging off his jacket and pulling at the hems of his shirt. Warm air moved across Yuuri’s chest, pebbling his skin, and Viktor’s were already moving to Yuuri’s waistband.

A strangled cry made its way out of Yuuri’s throat.

‘Viktor—Viktor, wait—’

And Viktor’s hands paused, and he was holding himself so still, the way something did before it was about to explode. Yuuri had never seen his eyes so dark.

Yuuri said, weakly, ‘The food will—’

‘After,’ Viktor was saying, and his voice was darker. His mouth was pressing into Yuuri’s skin. Yuuri let him. His eyes were rolling back. ‘After.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grinkov and Gordeeva's 1994 Olympics 'Moonlight Sonata' skate can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ysB0GTo2L0
> 
> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153559526579/excelsior-619 
> 
>   
> **Please click [Kudos ❤], leave a comment, or share if you enjoyed!**  
> 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

**| Yuuri |**

‘I’ve wanted this since—since—’

‘This morning?’

Viktor laughed. ‘Let’s try since I met you.’

‘If all it was going to take was some Russian _kompot_ and reindeer biscuits I would have made it all sooner.’

‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Viktor. ‘You’d never give me anything so easily.’

‘Have I failed to surprise you this time?’

‘Stop talking about us underestimating each other while I’m trying to have sex with you, Yuuri.’

Yuuri stopped talking.

Viktor’s eyes were shining as he pulled his clothes off. There was nothing erotic about it, nothing slow or enticing—and yet, still, it _was_. Viktor moved with a strange kind of grace that Yuuri had never quite understood and could not help but watch—it was like what lay beneath his skin was not the same thing that lay beneath anyone else’s. That he was made of something different. Yuuri didn’t think he’d be surprised if he ever found out that he was.

It was watching something other, and knowing that this was his. Yuuri’s head was spinning with the revelation as he stared at Viktor and sat naked on the bed, unsure what to do with himself while the last bit of fabric pooled at Viktor’s feet.

Viktor was made entirely of pale planes and taut muscles, hair so pale it looked white, blue veins like rivers running through tundra. Viktor had never looked so young before, and so much like a man at the same time. It was like looking at something that would be soft and blushing to the touch, and something that would know Yuuri more fully than he would have ever known himself.

Yuuri felt breathlessly self-conscious in front of him, and yet not inhibited at all: being like this, with Viktor, was the most confusing sensation he had ever felt. Sudden heat and icy coldness, something sweet as the _kompot_ cooling on the table and as sour as the salt on the nape of his neck. It was a moment of juxtapositions and mirrored images. It was knowing and unknowing; it was absolute sureness and not being confident about anything at all.

‘Your thoughts are loud,’ Viktor said, moving behind him onto the bed. The words should have been grounding, but Yuuri could only feel the sharp pounding of his heart against his ribs that made it a little difficult to breathe. He had wanted this—did want this—so much. Why was he shaking so much?

‘It’s just me,’ said Viktor. He was kneeling behind him, hips fitting unselfconsciously against Yuuri’s, so that, almost, Yuuri was kneeling back onto his thighs. He could feel Viktor’s cock, hard against the dip in his lower back, and the heat of it was dizzying.

Viktor’s lips were tracing constellations into the slope of his neck, and Viktor’s hand was moving lazily, slowly, carefully across the length of Yuuri’s cock, thumb circling the head. It was a rush of being too much and not enough and Yuuri couldn’t make his thoughts mean enough to be able to say them aloud. Everything was getting stuck, filling up, unable to spill over.

His head fell back onto Viktor’s shoulder, neck bare and open for him, pulse ready for tasting, and Viktor took his offering.

He felt Viktor’s other hand then. His knuckles were brushing down the other side of his neck, across his sternum, his pebbled nipples, down his sides and the bump of his ribs until they shivered, and further still. For a moment, both of Viktor’s hands were gripping him, the numbing sensation of push and pull that made Yuuri unsure of what way he was supposed to be going; it was an experience after falling: the feeling like, for a moment, gravity wasn’t going to kick in—until it did, and the rush was an explosion.

And then Viktor’s other hand left, fingers trailing in its wake until Yuuri was crying out muffled, throaty sounds, and Viktor’s fingers were touching him there, where they’d only been a few times before, and never for long—never for this.

His eyes were closed when he heard the tell-tale _crick_ of a plastic lid popping, and soon Viktor’s fingers were wet and cold, lube heating between his fingertips, and Viktor was pressing them against him.

‘No?’ Viktor murmured against his throat. Yuuri realised his head was shaking, rolling back and forth on Viktor’s shoulder.

‘ _Yes_ ,’ Yuuri breathed. Later, he would be embarrassed, but he would not let this come later if he could have it, at last, now.

Viktor pressed a finger into him, slow, testing, and Yuuri bit down hard on his tongue. The walls were too thin here; he could hear the Christmas music in the bar downstairs, and they would hear every uninhibited moan he let loose.

 _One day,_ he thought, _we’re going to go somewhere, where no one can listen, and it won’t matter if he makes me scream._

Eventually Viktor was pushing a second finger in, a third, and Yuuri’s trembling was building and building. It was impossible that Viktor could fit, but he had to. Yuuri couldn’t bear it if he couldn’t take him. He had to take him. Now, at last, that it was being given.

Some small part of him, Viktor’s fingers crooking inside of him until he lit up, his other hand wrapped around Yuuri’s cock, thought that Viktor might stop suddenly. That he might change his mind—rescind this invitation. And he was waiting for it, and hating that he was waiting for it.

He pressed against Viktor, and heard a breathy groan in reward. He reached back and knotted his fingers through Viktor’s hair, the silken strands damp, a little, from sweat. He let his other hand fall behind him, between the tight press of their bodies, and Viktor’s groan was louder this time as Yuuri took a hold of him, hard and hot and slick. Yuuri marvelled at the blind feel of it, the curl of his fingers tight; it was heated skin, the smoothness of veined marble. It felt like touching everything Viktor was, behind the charmed, elegant words and pressed coats: an unbridled heat, a smoothness that was somehow cutting.

‘Stop, Yuuri,’ Viktor was saying, strangled.

Yuuri obliged, but he didn’t let go. ‘It’s enough,’ he said. ‘Viktor, it’s enough.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Please,’ said Yuuri, sinking down a little, onto the crook of Viktor’s fingers, breath catching in his throat.

Viktor didn’t wait. In a moment, he was pushing Yuuri forward, and Yuuri had to catch himself on his hands to stop himself from sprawling across the sheets. Viktor’s hands were resting on his hips, thumbs rubbing low circles into the small of his back.

There was a shift, and Yuuri thought Viktor was going to do it, but suddenly he felt a tickle of hair on the backs of his thighs, and a rush of hot air.

The hot swipe of a tongue across him—

‘ _Viktor_ ,’ Yuuri cried.  

‘All right,’ Viktor was saying, darkly. A smile lingered in it, but it was too intense to be anything like humour. ‘All right, sweetheart.’

‘Please, Viktor. Please just—’

‘Just?’

Yuuri leaned forward, and pressed his mouth against his fist, knuckles white around bunched sheets. He realised what he looked like, like this, raising himself. Presenting himself. And he couldn’t care.

‘Just— _please_ , Viktor.’

‘But I don’t know what you want, Yuuri.’

Yuuri felt like crying. ‘I can’t— _Please_ , Viktor, just— _Inside_ —’

‘All right,’ Viktor said again. He was making quiet hushing sounds, hands brushing up and down Yuuri’s flanks, smoothing him out. He wasn’t going to make Yuuri say it—wasn’t going to push him into it. Viktor’s fingers worked into him again, like he was making sure, like he just wanted to _check_ , and then they were gone, and Yuuri felt something else press against him.

He froze.

‘Okay,’ said Viktor, with some strange, deep understanding—and then he was tugging on Yuuri’s shoulder, and Yuuri went with it, rolling onto his back, Viktor hooking Yuuri’s legs over his shoulders, Yuuri’s heels sliding in the thin sheen of sweat across his shoulder blades, until Yuuri was open to him in a different way.

Viktor was _looking_ at him this time; he had been looking at him seconds before, but the difference now was that Viktor was seeing him, and Yuuri was looking back and seeing too. Seeing felt like everything they were about to do, and Yuuri wasn’t sure what it was going to be like when they finally did.

It already felt like falling.

_Please please catch me._

‘Is this okay?’ Viktor said. ‘Like this?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I might change my mind in a minute.’

Viktor’s laugh was low and quiet. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said. ‘Ready?’

Yuuri nodded, slow.

‘Ready, Yuuri? Tell me.’

‘I’m ready,’ Yuuri whispered.

Viktor kept staring at him, and Yuuri thought he was going to come apart on that look alone. It was too much. He was too much—this close, this possible. Yuuri had never thought he would have won the Grand Prix Final, but he thought, more, that he would never have had this.

 _How much will he want me once I win_? he’d ask himself, but he found the answer in Viktor’s look, in the way his hands were roaming across Yuuri’s torso, slow and sure, steadying him. Reassuring him. _I’m right here with you_ , he was saying. _I’m the one that is making you feel like this._

He was seeing this, taking it all in, and Viktor pressed into him.

Everything went blank.

It went still and was made of hot white noise.

‘It’s all right,’ Viktor was saying. ‘You’re okay, sweetheart. Look at me, Yuuri. _Solnyshko_.’

_Little sun._

And Yuuri _was_ looking at him, wasn’t he? But there was a hand on this face, cupping his cheek, and Yuuri realised that his eyes had squeezed shut, and when he opened them he saw pale skin and blue eyes that were endlessly earnest and open to him. They were letting Yuuri see everything, and Yuuri had to tell himself to take this while he could. Take everything Viktor was giving him.

‘I’ve got you,’ Viktor was saying, and Yuuri couldn’t breathe.

It was too much and not enough, and all he could do was press Viktor into him, pull at him with his nails biting into Viktor’s shoulders, until they were joined by one slow, hot, choking slide.

‘ _Blyat_ —’

‘Oh my god—’

Everything halted. Viktor was stilled, buried inside him. Inside. Yuuri’s back was lifting off the bed, legs hooked over Viktor’s shoulders, bent in half, and he was pressed up against Viktor with no room to spare. He had his mouth at Viktor’s neck, and his breathing turned to choking, shuddering gasps.

It was impossible, wasn’t it? That he could feel this full—this _whole_. But Viktor’s chin was resting on his head so Yuuri could feel every low breath he was making, how it hitched in the back of his throat, and he knew that Viktor was feeling this too. That it was real, too real, for the both of them.

‘Yuuri, my god, you’re…’

But Viktor didn’t finish. What he did instead was make small, tiny shifts with his hips, pushing like there was somewhere further to go, like Yuuri had more room to give, the smallest of rocking movements, and each time Yuuri was blinded by it. He didn’t know how much time passed. He didn’t know how to make _sense_ of things anymore. Was it always like this?

He didn’t ask, because he couldn’t make his throat make a sound that wasn’t keening and desperate half-gasps, and because he didn’t want Viktor to tell him. He didn’t want to imagine that something other than this had existed for Viktor—that Viktor might have had this with someone else first.

Eventually, the rocking turned to slow sliding, and when Viktor pulled out, leaving him half-empty, he couldn’t explain the kind of relief it was when Viktor joined with him again.

 _I’ll never want this to stop_ , he thought, with every push, every reunion like the touch of skin on skin was the first, and Viktor was moving like he wasn’t ever going to.

Things, so quickly, before he could catch a breath, were going faster. Viktor was kneeling now, Yuuri pulled up into his arms, legs around his waist and heels digging into his lower back like he could possibly get closer than he already was.

Their kissing was charged and Yuuri could taste himself on Viktor’s tongue as Viktor, with every shift, drove himself deeper; as Yuuri, with every lift of his hips that made him feel like he was going to fall apart, fell apart.

‘ _Viktor_ ,’ Yuuri moaned eventually, a muffled, quiet cry. He could hear music from downstairs, people walking past his window on the street below, snow crunching. Someone could be listening to this moment. ‘It’s—it’s too much.’

Viktor didn’t stop—he didn’t slow. Kept moving like he didn’t hear him, and their skin was sliding wet against each other, every part of them alive, every part of them trembling through the motions. Something had been building low and heavy in the base of Yuuri’s stomach, but for a while it had been clinging onto the edges of his fingertips, shivering above his skin, a shockwave waiting to unleash, waiting to ride over him.

Viktor’s stomach was hard against the length of Yuuri’s cock, pressing in closer, harder, with every pulse of his hips. Yuuri was going to come without a hand on him, from the friction, from the feeling of it all alone. He could hear the sounds he was making, tangled, ruined things.

He pressed his heels harder into Viktor’s back. He couldn’t bring himself to let go. He had to ride this. He had to let Viktor carry him through this. He had to trust him.

‘You can, Yuuri,’ Viktor said. ‘For me. With me. A little longer.’

A little longer turned into minutes that felt like days, and soon every part of Yuuri was singing with it, hanging onto some precipice with trembling arms. Minutes felt like a lifetime. Yuuri—because he was human, and because Viktor _knew_ he could not—could not hold on for that long.

‘Please be close,’ Yuuri whispered. ‘Please be close, Viktor—’

‘I’m close,’ Viktor said. His face was flushed. His eyes were blown. He looked lost. ‘I’m so close.’

And then he was reaching a hand between them, only holding them up with an arm that Yuuri could feel was trembling and the _strength_ in it—Viktor gripped him, and it wasn’t friction anymore; this wasn’t friction, and—

‘Come, Yuuri,’ Viktor whispered. ‘Come for me.’

‘With you,’ Yuuri said, a cry. ‘ _With you_.’

A nod, hurried, Viktor’s mouth on Yuuri’s shoulder. ‘With me,’ he murmured into the soft skin. ‘With me.’

A fast, practiced hand, finesse even with the rush of it all. Everything was getting smaller, and internal: hot, shared breaths, something live across their skin. Yuuri was falling into himself, every electric pulse running through him, and he realised, as it tore through him, rendered him limp and useless and spent, that it had felt, for a moment, like he had reached inside of Viktor too.

* * *

Outside, it had started snowing again.

Inside, it felt like it was blanketing them in something soft and white and muted.

Viktor slept with a looseness that he didn’t have when he was awake. His hair was mussed and tangled, his body a mass of pale, muscled limbs that shook with each breath he took. He slept like he would wake at the stirring of warm air across his skin, but with a youthful, carefree splay of limbs, a tilt of his chin and sharp jaw that was almost arrogant, that said he wouldn’t bother to open his eyes. Yuuri dared to lay a hand on Viktor’s hip at one point, and the sound he had made was an arrow settling, quivering in Yuuri’s heart.

 _So this is what it feels like,_ Yuuri thought, looking at him. He couldn’t not look at him. He didn’t want to look away. _Giving everything to them._

Viktor’s lips were red as Christmas berries, and when Yuuri ran a finger over them, they parted, letting him in. Yuuri felt the unbelievable sensation of knowing that Viktor would open up for him if he asked, that, probably, he would give him everything.

The room smelled of cinnamon and of sex, and Yuuri thought he was going to remember the smell of it, the feel of Viktor warm and pressed against him in sleep, the cold press of air against the window panes, the way Viktor looked young and curled into himself, for the rest of his life.

Yuuri watched him, brushed his fingers through the loose strands of Viktor’s hair across his forehead. He didn’t wake.

Time passed. The sky was growing dim and heavy, and the snow continued to fall. And then Viktor’s stomach growled.

Yuuri laughed, quietly. He moved off the bed, stumbling, and felt the ache between his thighs that made his skin flush. It felt… good. It felt like Viktor.

The _kompot_ was lukewarm as he dipped a finger into it, the potatoes had gone a little cold, and the meat had cooled. The biscuits looked no less awful than they had before, but the afterglow of sex and the realisation of what they had done made Yuuri want to laugh at them now.

When he turned, food piled onto a plate and had a cup in his hand, Viktor was lying on his side watching him, blinking slowly, coming back to himself in careful increments.

‘Hello,’ Yuuri said, coming to sit next to him, cross-legged. He put the cup on the side table, and held out a piece of meat between his fingers.

Viktor stared at him. Normally neat and fastidious when he ate, Viktor, now, was not. His mouth wrapped around Yuuri’s fingers. His tongue was hot, and Yuuri’s fingers were left glistening.

Viktor chewed, and swallowed. His eyes were heavy, and they did not leave Yuuri’s.

‘Hello,’ he said. His voice was rough, and warm.

Yuuri had to close his eyes.  

It went like that, except for when Viktor would interrupt him with kisses. When Viktor would be the one to feed him broken pieces of biscuit that made crumbs fall onto the sheets. When Viktor’s hands would not go to the plate but—

‘Viktor.’ Yuuri, voice strangled. ‘That’s not—’

Speaking would stop for a moment, and the plate would be moved aside. They did not dress for some time. It took longer for them to finish the food.

‘I’m sorry it was cold,’ Yuuri said after a while, warm in Viktor’s arms. The sky was darkening outside. Downstairs, the music was louder, and there was a growing hubbub of conversation and clinking glasses. Laughter drifted up to them. They could hear it, and yet they felt entirely separate from it.

‘It always ended up cold,’ Viktor said. His voice had a dream-like quality to it. Yuuri didn’t know if that was because he was thinking about what they had just done—what they had spent the day doing—or if he was thinking about home—his first home. ‘Someone ended up getting too drunk. Everyone argued with someone by the time we ate. It was mad.’

Yuuri was trying to picture it: Viktor, young and long-haired, pulled around by his cousins as an endless string of aunts and uncles and grandparents grumbled and muttered around a fire and laughed loud, liquor-tinged, red-cheeked laughter like sailors. Maybe, instead, Viktor had sat quiet in an armchair and listened to his family talk to one another with quiet blue eyes, and wished he wasn’t there.

Yuuri knew there were other ways it might have been—a thousand other ways—but his mind stuttered instead on the image of Viktor. Freshly seventeen, with skin fairer and softer than it was now, hair brushing the small of his back. A world champion held in that lithe, youthful body, in eyes that must have been already sharp and too knowing, and lips that made promises he couldn’t have known he was making. Was he lonely? Was he arrogant and entirely unselfconscious? Was he, instead, soft and modest and delightful in some early naiveté that barely knew itself?

Yuuri knew Viktor only as the boy—the man, really, because he was not a boy in the same way Yuri now was—that he had seen move across the ice. And that already made Yuuri’s heart stop to watch.

What a creature he must have been to look at in the flesh; but what a thing he must have been to know.

‘Do you miss it all?’ Yuuri asked him. He lay pressed against Viktor; Viktor’s arm held him close to him, wrapped around his shoulder. Their feet were tangled. ‘Your parents?’

Viktor was quiet. He had been quiet all day, except for when…

‘I miss home,’ Viktor said, eventually. ‘But I don’t miss it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Viktor’s fingers were an idle trace across Yuuri’s skin. ‘I miss the cold,’ he said. ‘The cold there is different to here. I miss the buildings and the churches. I miss the markets. I miss speaking Russian. But I don’t miss the rest of it. No one smiles much on the streets. People drink too much sometimes. I don’t—’ He seemed to be fighting with himself. ‘I don’t miss my family. I should, but I don’t.’

‘That…’ Yuuri didn’t really know what to say. He settled on: ‘That doesn’t make you a bad person, Viktor. No one really owes their family anything.’

‘Realistically true, but not culturally true.’

Yuuri supposed that he was right. Respect did not work the same way in Russia and Japan as it might have in the West. He was not sure who had it better.

‘Viktor?’ Yuuri said, soft.

Viktor’s answer was a soft exhalation of breath that might have been a ‘yes’ or a ‘what?’

‘What was in the letter?’ Yuuri said.

He caught the moment when Viktor went still.

The letter was peeking out of Viktor’s coat, pooled on the floor with the rest of their clothes. Yuuri had held the envelope between his forefingers and thumbs when Viktor slept. He had thought about opening it, and he thought about giving it to Viktor, but he wanted to throw it out the window. He couldn’t let himself do any of those, so instead it sat in his hands.

He had stared at the stamp of the Figure Skating Federation of Russia, and at the Cyrillic handwriting. And then had put it back.

‘They must be offering you a lot of money if they think you’ll change your mind,’ Yuuri said quietly. He knew, really, what was inside that letter. What they were still asking of Viktor.

Viktor pulled his arm away from Yuuri, and they shifted, moving until they were sitting across from each other, spines bowed. They were not touching anymore, except for the careful brush Yuuri made against Viktor’s fingers.

‘Not enough,’ Viktor said.

‘Maybe you should,’ Yuuri said quietly.

‘Should what?’

Yuuri let his hair fall further across his eyes. It was getting long. ‘Maybe you should take it. Maybe this is—maybe it’s what you should be doing.’

‘I said I wasn’t going to.’ His eyes were going to be too much to look at if Yuuri lifted his own, but talking to him without looking at him was hard. It felt, after everything they had just done, entirely dishonest.

‘I know,’ said Yuuri. ‘But maybe you should. Otherwise you’re just here. You’re watching me train with Hatsuyo and being around Sascha who you hate—’

‘Hate is a strong word.’

‘—and you’re coaching us for something you can’t tell anyone about. I’m just—I’m so conscious that you’re giving this up for us, and that I just expected you to do it, when you’re getting nothing out of it. It’s—it’s stagnant for you. It’s not fair.’

‘Coaching isn’t about being seen in the limelight, Yuuri. It’s okay.’

‘Is it? Really?’ said Yuuri. The lines on his forehead were so deep. ‘It just doesn’t make sense to me that you’d give up this opportunity. It’s huge. It’s more than any of this is going to give you.’

Viktor sighed. ‘Yuuri, it’s fine. Honestly.’

‘Stop—stop _saying_ that it’s fine and that it’s okay.’

Viktor’s voice was calm. He was entirely unflustered about the whole thing, and it only made Yuuri feel angrier. ‘Then what do you want me to say?’ Viktor asked.

‘I want you to give me the real reason. I want the truth.’

‘I’ve been lying?’

‘You’ve been _covering_ something. You’re rational, Viktor. You weigh things up. The decision you’ve made isn’t rational.’

‘It’s entirely rational,’ said Viktor.

‘ _Why_? _Why_ is it?’

‘Because I can’t accept what they’re offering to give me.’

‘ _Why_?’

‘Because I’m not willing to do what they want me to do.’

‘ _Why_?’

‘Because they want me to give you up in exchange for working for them.’

Yuuri faltered. ‘ _Why_?’ he said again, but this time it was a whisper.

Viktor dragged a hand across his face. ‘They said it—it goes against their institutional and national values.’

‘Because you’re coaching me?’

Viktor’s look was pained. ‘Because I love a man, Yuuri. Because I love you.’

Yuuri blinked. His head, suddenly, felt blank. ‘ _Oh_ ,’ he said softly. ‘They want—they’d want us to break up.’

‘They cannot have a Russian spokesperson who raises _interest_ in or _distorts_ non-traditional family values.’

The words, Yuuri realised, were not Viktor’s. They were not even really the Federation’s. They were the government’s. It sent a chill through Yuuri.

‘Do you see?’ Viktor said quietly, but with an urgency in his words that Yuuri couldn’t ignore. ‘Do you see why this isn’t something I can just accept? Something I’m not willing to take on no matter how much money they throw at me, or how much _prestige_ I get out of it?’

Yuuri felt his throat working, trying to swallow. It was suddenly incredibly dry. ‘But you won’t skate against them,’ he said. ‘They’ll ask you to do that because it’s their _values_ but you won’t disagree with it in any way that matters. You’ll just say no.’

Viktor’s eyes closed for a moment. ‘They’ve given me everything, Yuuri. I owe them for everything I’ve earned—my whole reputation.’

‘Sascha said—’

‘Oh, _Sascha_ said, did she? Well then it must be right.’

Yuuri gritted his teeth. ‘Sascha said that, really, they’ve done nothing for her. The only one that got her to the Olympics, to win her medals, was herself. Not the ISU or the Russian Federation. Why does she not owe them anything and you owe them everything?’

Viktor’s voice was flat, and hard: ‘Sascha and I have very different values about whom we _owe_ things to.’

‘So you owe your career to an institution that is so against two men loving each other that they won’t hire you unless you break up with me? Maybe they’ll even make you marry a pretty Russian wife so you can have pretty blonde and blue-eyed Russian children who figure skate and—’

‘ _Yuuri_ —’

‘ _Viktor,’_ Yuuri said. His eyes were wide in total bewilderment. His breathing felt strange. _‘_ Don’t you see how ridiculous this is? You’re a gay man who _endorses_ homophobia—’

‘I’m not _endorsing_ it.’

‘Well you’re certainly not denying it.’

Viktor’s eyes darkened. ‘Are you calling me a coward?’

‘What? No, Viktor, I—’

‘Because it’s remarkably easy for you to tell me all of this when in the year I’ve known you, you’ve not said one thing about your own country’s impingements on gay rights.’

‘That’s not true. I told you I didn’t like how the Japanese media had ignored us after we kissed. How they _do_ ignore us.’

‘It is true, Yuuri,’ Viktor said. ‘You told me but you didn’t tell _them_. You didn’t do anything. And I don’t blame you. Because if you spoke out it would have risked things for you. Japan’s National skater condemning the nation he was skating for? It’s _dangerous_.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Yuuri. ‘Maybe I didn’t do enough. But that was barely a month ago. And I’m doing something about it now. And you—you can too. You can still change your mind.’

Viktor looked away. ‘I—I can’t. I can’t.’

‘You can. You just don’t want to.’

‘Yuuri…’

Yuuri squeezed his eyes shut.

 _Be patient,_ Sascha had said, and Yuuri understood what she meant now: _He’ll change his mind eventually. Slowly. With enough of a push._

Yuuri swallowed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s your birthday and I said I wouldn’t push it anymore. I just… I want to be able to do this with you. I want us to do this together.’

He felt Viktor’s hand on his cheek, thumb brushing against his skin. When he opened his eyes, Viktor’s smile was soft, and sad at the corners. ‘We are together,’ he said. ‘Not in that way. But in the way that matters.’

Yuuri felt himself sigh, the air rushing from some deep part of him. He leaned into that touch, warm and soft and familiar and—new. The promise it held in it was new.

As if catching the shift in air, Viktor rose, kneeling. The sheets pooled around his hips, barely hiding the suggestion of what was below.

‘In the way that matters,’ Viktor said again, a hand still on Yuuri’s face. The other was trailing across Yuuri’s ribcage, across the hard muscles of his stomach, lower, until Yuuri felt a quiet gasp leave him. Viktor’s hand, even there, was warm and familiar.

His lips were on the line of Yuuri’s jaw, pressing soft into the shadowed part of it, on the soft part behind his ear, on the pulse of his throat. Each kiss was softer than the last, each like he was learning something he didn’t know about Yuuri with each brush of his lips, each like he was rediscovering him.

‘Yuuri?’ Viktor murmured.

‘Mm?’

‘Merry Christmas.’

Yuuri groaned, and it was followed by a laugh of spent exhaustion as Viktor’s fingers pressed into him. ‘Happy birthday, Viktor.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153648446784/excelsior-719
> 
> Please click [Kudos ❤], leave a comment, or share if you enjoyed!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com

##  **| Viktor |**

Skating had always been a quiet thing—exhausting and releasing at the same time. Viktor rarely played the music for his piece until the last few days. It was frustrating if you slipped up in practice and had to replay it again, the same bars, the same high voice playing through the speakers, over and over again until it was all you could hear. One same, single mistake on repeat.

So there was nothing, normally, that he could hear but the chalky scrape of metal cutting through ice. That was his music. There was nothing but that and the sound of his breathing, the shifting of fabric, the rush of blood in his ears. That was his music.

And then Yuuri had come. And the sounds were not his own skates; the heartbeat he was hearing was Yuuri’s. The breathing was Yuuri’s and the sounds he made, breathy bursts of tiredness and surprise… That, soon, became his music. Looking at him was lyrical.

And it should have been, now, except that Yuuri was skating with someone who was not him—a pretty little Japanese girl who, maybe, in some other universe, Yuuri might one day have fallen in love with. And it should have been, now, but all he could hear was Sascha muttering into her phone, voice rising high. And she was speaking Russian, so Viktor could do nothing but listen. He had been speaking English for so long, and suddenly it was like hearing home, unable to shut himself off from it—to let his mind reach out for it.

‘Just give me a yes or a no,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t want your fucking criticism. I want to know if you’re in or you’re out.’ A pause. ‘You don’t know. Well I can’t deal with your _I don’t knows_. I need a partner now. I need someone with the fucking balls to do it.’

Viktor clenched his jaw. ‘They’re skating, Sascha dear,’ he said calmly. ‘And you’re a distraction.’

She held a finger up to him from where they stood on the sidelines. She never sounded angry, and he used to like that about her. Her voice took an insistency—an urgency, that was almost persuasive.

On the rink, Hatsuyo and Yuuri were skating the first quarter of their routine. They’d had a week of practice since Christmas, and Minako had been helping them with their lifts in her studio. Hatsuyo was small and slight, and Yuuri was strong. Viktor knew he was strong, remembered the feel of those arms under his hands, the hardness of his chest, the taper of his narrow waist. Viktor was going to remember the overwhelming feeling of being loved by someone like that every Christmas and every birthday to come.

But the practice was still a toll on him. His arms still shook as he held Hatsuyo. Sometimes he could barely lift her into a throw. Others, he could hold her above his head for three turns. It was going to take a while. They had less than three months before the first competition.

Viktor had to make sure that he was eating properly; he had to make sure that he was getting his rest, even though every night he would kiss Yuuri and not want to stop.

‘I need to skate tomorrow, Viktor,’ Yuuri would groan, but his voice was full of yearning. Of want. And the sound of it made it harder to stop. This, Viktor wanted to explain to him, was why they hadn’t before. Not because he hadn’t wanted it—wanted Yuuri—but because winning had to be more than them for a while, until it was over. Viktor would never be able to stop touching him and let him rest. And it was so difficult to do it now.

Viktor watched as Yuuri raised Hatsuyo into a carry lift, his legs spread wide. Hatsuyo had her arms outstretched behind her as Yuuri held her at her waist, her legs together and raised slightly into the platter position, like she was flying. There was no time limit on the holds, but there were still limits: no more than three and a half rotations, and the regulations for the next season said that three lifts had to be performed in the long programme, with at least one lasso lift and one hand-to-hip, and only a waist-hold and twist lift in the short.

Already Viktor could see that Yuuri’s arms were shaking, and Hatsuyo was tapping on his arm for him to bring her down. The movement was slow, and too careful, and Viktor knew it would be like this.

He had been barely sure of himself when Viktor first met him, and now he was having to be sure of someone else too. He was having to be sure that he wouldn’t hurt her.

‘You’re just as responsible for her as she is of you,’ Minako had told them the day before in her studio. Yuuri had been holding Hatsuyo in the same lift as he had just done on the ice, but he had seemed surer of himself, on bare feet, with soft mats around them, with Viktor’s hands on his hands, keeping them steady as Sascha and Minako helped Hatsuyo hold her position, her core tight.

It was harder on the ice; and it was harder when they lifted slowly, not relying on speed to carry them through the momentum of the lift. But they had to go slow in the beginning, or it would end with broken bones and ice-made bruises.

They had spent a week on that one lift, and Viktor could imagine how Yuuri’s heart was racing as he settled Hatsuyo down now, and gave her an unsteady jerk of his head that was probably supposed to be a nod.

 _Trust each other,_ Viktor thought, and _wanted_ to say, but something was pulling at his heart at the thought of it. He knew what this was going to be like, too, having to watch this. And not wanting Yuuri, really, to trust anyone but him. It was easy to know how this was going to feel, to watch this, to guide him, but it was not easy to feel it.

Beside him, Sascha’s voice had grown low, the words bitten off.

‘Fine. Fine. Don’t then. But I swear to god, if I hear you tell anyone about this, Chenkov—Oh, you don’t think we’ll make it? We’ll see about that at the Finals. Break a leg, Chenkov. Literally.’

Sascha swore into the phone as she hung up, shoving it into her jacket pocket. Her scowl was thunderous.

Viktor stared at her. ‘ _Chenkov_ ,’ he said, forcing the word out. ‘You were asking Chenkov for this?’

‘I’m not exactly high on options here, Viktor. Name me one other high ranking Russian skater willing to sit out the season for this.’

‘ _Chenkov_?’

‘He’s an ass. I know. But he’s a good skater. I have a chance with him.’

‘He’s not—he’s not just an ass, Sascha. He’s a—he’s—You know what he was like at Sambo.’

He couldn’t get the words out, and Sascha couldn’t look at him. Viktor didn’t think he wanted her to. Looking at her was like being fifteen again.

‘He’d never throw himself on the line for this,’ said Viktor. ‘He hates us.’

 _Us._ He had never thought he’d refer to himself and Sascha as an _us_ before, and he thought, too, how funny it was that this should be what brought them together.

‘His media image outside Russia isn’t good. It was an opportunity.’

‘This would ruin him inside Russia. He would never put aside prejudice for _opportunity_.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. And you do too.’

He could see Chenkov’s face. The curl of a lip. Barbed words on his tongue. The impact of a shoulder, hot breath in his ear, a hand yanking on his hair. It had been long then. And he’d weathered it. Because it hadn’t meant anything, and it didn’t matter. Viktor had been the one getting the golds. What did it matter that he’d had to face anything else when the interviewers wanted to see him and talk to him and congratulate him?

But it had mattered. Viktor could hear muffled crying, a harsh, bitten-off scream. It had torn through him then to hear it, and he felt it shudder through him now.

_Try and skate on a broken leg, pidaras._

Sascha was looking at him, like she could hear it too.

‘Viktor… I’m—’

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘We’re not doing this now.’

‘They don’t speak Russian. They’re busy with the lift.’

‘And I said we’re not _doing_ this now. It’s a little late for your apology.’

‘I was twelve. I didn’t—I thought I was helping.’

‘No,’ Viktor said, jaw set, eyes looking out on the rink but not really seeing anything but white. ‘You thought you were doing what you wanted. You always thought you were doing what _you_ wanted.’

‘Because I thought it was going to make _you_ happy, Viktor. I thought… I thought them knowing… You were so happy with him and I wanted them to see that and—’

‘You wanted. You thought. Sanda. It wasn’t _about_ you. It was about _me_.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘What? Sanda? You’re not Russian, Sanda. You’re Romanian.’

‘I am Russian,’ she said hotly. ‘I skate for Russia. I’m as much a part of our country as you are.’

Viktor couldn’t help it. He laughed. ‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘You’re the one trying to cover up who you are—who you really are—and you’re angry because I _won’t_ skate for _our beloved country_ with you?’

‘It’s not about skating for Russia. Not at all. Don’t twist my words.’

Viktor scoffed. ‘If that’s the worst I can do to you, then I think I win.’

‘Is that all you think about? Winning? I know you’ve never had anyone to care about before Yuuri but—’

‘Shut up, Sascha. Honestly, just shut up. You don’t know who I am. You have never known who I am.’ Viktor gritted his teeth. ‘You’re just as bad as the rest of them, all trying to stake some claim to me. I bet you tell everyone we were the _best_ of friends at Sambo, don’t you?’

Sascha paused. ‘No, actually,’ she said. ‘But we were friends. Once.’

Viktor barely resisted rolling his eyes. Friends. How quaint. How embarrassing if she truly thought they could have been called that. Speaking to her, talking to her, _listening_ to her—it was like reliving it. It was liking sitting across from his parents again in the Visitation Room and seeing their faces fall. It was like hearing the sound of a cry and a hard chair falling down on splintering bone. It was like sitting in his bedroom in his house, after, and hearing footsteps coming up the stairs, and knowing he had to leave.

It was never difficult to leave anywhere, after that. Except, looking at Yuuri now as he moved across the ice, every part of him in motion, Viktor thought that was probably not so true anymore.

‘Friends don’t try to ruin each other’s lives, Sascha.’

‘You talk about like this like it was all some wicked, pre-empted machinations. I was a little girl, Viktor. I wanted to do something for you.’

‘And I told you I don’t _care_ what you wanted, Sascha.’

She stared at him. ‘You won’t even let me apologise, will you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve heard you try.’

She ignored that. ‘And I think I know why you won’t.’

‘Go on then.’

‘It’s because if you let me apologise, then you might have to actually forgive me.’

He glanced at her. ‘You think it’s that easy?’

‘I think with you it is,’ she said. ‘We didn’t just idolise you because of how you skated, Viktor. Or because of your looks. We idolised you because you seemed, sometimes, to be the only good person that existed among us. You were—always decent. In a way that we weren’t expected to be and didn’t have to be and yet you always were anyway.’

‘There’s a difference,’ Viktor said coldly, folding his arms, ‘between what people wanted me to be and what I actually was—what I am.’

‘I think you tell yourself that. I think you say that so you don’t have to face up to the fact that you’re not a bad person. I think you say it so you don’t have to hold yourself to any expectations. I think you’d be surprised what you could achieve if you had some expectations for one once.’

‘For once. Like—like none of this, like where I’ve gotten isn’t because I didn’t have _expectations_?’

‘I’m not talking about skating. I’m talking about you.’

‘I don’t have two different identities. I told you not to glorify me. You don’t understand how that makes me feel.’

Sascha sighed. ‘Viktor, I just… I’m—I’m tired of having to do this with you. I don’t want this to be how we spend a year together.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

She stared at him. He knew what that look was: disappointed expectations. _This is why I don’t hold myself to much_ , he thought.

‘If you won’t do it for me, do it for Yuuri.’

‘Don’t make this about him. Don’t you dare. He and I are nothing to do with you.’

Her eyes were dark. ‘You think I’ll ruin you both too, don’t you?’ She shook her head. ‘God, what you must think of me…’

‘You don’t want to know what I really think of you.’

Sascha fell silent, and Viktor could feel his heart beating uncomfortably in his chest. This wasn’t how he wanted things to be between them—every time they spoke. He wasn’t going to be able to handle it for too long.

Trying to talk about skating with her was trying to wade through treacle; messy and tiring and making his bones ache, because they could agree on nothing. Trying to talk about anything else ended up with them talking about this, because Viktor couldn’t allow for anything else. He couldn’t, really, allow for a conversation about the weather, or about Piter, or about something that wasn’t skating. Because that would mean they were more than they actually were. Every conversation felt like a too-low jump, ready to land on a leg that was about to buckle beneath him. Something, soon, would break.

‘I came to you,’ said Sascha, after a while. Her voice was tentative as a secret. Viktor had the distinct impression she hadn’t wanted—hadn’t meant to tell him this at all. ‘When I was eighteen. My parents, when I came out to them… I came to your house in Piter. You weren’t far from Dynamo.’

Viktor blinked, slowly. ‘You came to my house.’

‘I had nowhere to go.’

‘And you came to me,’ said Viktor, steadily. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘would you—’ Every word trembled with disbelief: ‘—think that I would help you,’ he said, ‘after you—’

‘Because I thought that no matter what, you would get it. After everything, you would be the only person in the whole country to understand.’

Viktor stared at her. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘I left years before that. I went to live with Yakov.’

‘I know that now. Your parents shut the door on my face.’

‘You were naïve to think I’d be there for you.’

‘Was I?’ she said. ‘If I’d turned up—if you’d been there—would you have let me in? After everything?’

Viktor didn’t answer. He didn’t want to, but more: he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think his answer would be the one either of them wanted to hear, and that terrified him. Sometimes he liked to think that he was good; he liked to think that Yuuri made him good. But most of the time he wasn’t sure, and that terrified him more, because not being good was not being good enough for Yuuri. Yuuri deserved good.

‘Where did you go?’ he said instead.

‘Hatsuyo was in Piter. She let me stay with her while she was there for a competition.’

‘And that’s how you two…’

‘I knew she was gay. She had come out in Canada, and I just—she seemed like safety to me.’ Her voice had dropped low and quiet. Viktor had never heard her sound like this before. ‘She just seemed to promise me everything with a smile and I—I wanted to give her the world for it. I wanted to give her everything.’

Viktor, as she spoke, found himself looking at Yuuri. He was laughing with Hatsuyo as they stumbled and slipped out of sync. Yuuri, like he sensed him watching, glanced over. The smile across his face was wonderful, and Viktor felt the corners of his mouth turn up, unconsciously, to meet it. He was not looking at a rival, or a fan. He was looking at someone entirely new, someone he would quite willingly give the rest of his life to, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that realisation.

‘You look like you would give him everything, too.’

Viktor glanced at Sascha. ‘I do,’ he said. But she was looking at him, knowing, and he knew that he was standing here, while Yuuri was on the ice, and so it wasn’t entirely true.

* * *

 

It was January.

Impossibly, it had gotten colder, and walking down the streets of Hasetsu sometimes felt like skating, only being less certain of where you might land.

The four of them split their time between the rink and Minako’s studio, and if not there, then they seemed to have taken up permanent residence of the table nearest the fire at Yuuri’s parents’ inn. Hiroko brought them an endless stream of tea and _yakitori_ and brown rice and pickled vegetables while Hatsuyo and Yuuri nursed calloused, blistered feet.

Viktor was kneading his hands into Yuuri’s shoulders after a training session one dull afternoon, sitting flush against him, knees drawn up at his sides, and he couldn’t care that people in the inn were watching, because Yuuri’s head had rolled back onto his shoulder at one point, and Viktor wanted to taste the salt of sweat on his neck.

They sat up a little straighter as Hatsuyo and Sascha appeared from upstairs, and Hatsuyo was holding a large, rolled up piece of paper. Sascha picked at edamame beans while she moved the bowls and plates and cups to the corners of the table, and Hatsuyo unravelled the paper across the surface.

Viktor put his chin on Yuuri’s shoulder, hands wrapped around his torso. He stared.

‘It’s colour-coded,’ said Viktor.

‘I’ve been working on a schedule,’ Hatsuyo said, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I think it’s good to have visuals.’

‘Visuals,’ said Viktor.

Sascha’s look was withering.

It was visual, all right. But Viktor was mildly impressed.

The dates of the competitions were there; the training sessions were detailed with benchmarks she and Yuuri had to reach. There were rest days and little recipe sheets attached to the corners with paperclips, and Hatsuyo had sketched drawings of their costumes and the lifts for the routines.

Viktor watched as Yuuri trailed his fingers over it, bumping over the stickers and the tape and the pull-out sticky notes.

It was a calendar, but also—

‘It’s our life for the next year,’ Yuuri said. ‘It’s easier to see it like this. It makes it… less scary.’

‘I think that’s the pink,’ said Viktor.

Yuuri nudged him in the ribs with his elbow, not hard, but Viktor caught the warning: _She has done this, and you haven’t._

Viktor cleared his throat. ‘In Russia… Things were… more black and white.’

Yakov’s training schedules had been on scraps of paper that Viktor rarely got to catch a glimpse of, until his last few years, when Viktor would do nothing that Yakov told him to do anymore unless he wanted to. They had been scribbled notes in black biro, barely anything that really made any sense except to Yakov, and Viktor realised that most of it was in Yakov’s head. Sitting somewhere in that old, calculating mind that to understand was like walking through a mine field. Viktor had long since stopped trying to understand the man—simply because he didn’t need to. There was no need for them to like each other much.

He was filled with the memory, suddenly, of showing up on his doorstep in Piter. Not sixteen, his hair not as long as it would be. He had barely filled a suitcase with his things when he left Sambo.

Yakov had given him a long, hard look—like, for a minute, he wasn’t going to let him in. It had been snowing. The winter was a long, hard one, and Viktor had knocked on too many doors before he found Yakov’s, so his clothes were soaked through, hair clinging wet to his face. He hadn’t felt the cold.

‘I don’t take in strays,’ Yakov had said, voice gruff.

‘I’m a world champion,’ Viktor had said. His voice had sounded more confident than he had felt in that moment. His first Grand Prix Final was barely a few weeks away, and he knew Yakov had been eyeing him up as a student. ‘That’s who you’d be letting in.’

A longer, harder stare. That young, that fragile, Viktor had almost cried beneath it. And then Yakov had stepped aside. He had asked remarkably few questions, and laid down remarkably fewer rules.

‘I don’t care who you are off the ice,’ he’d said that night, when Viktor’s clothes were drying in front of the fire and Yakov’s housekeeper had made him a bowl of _borscht_ , and his skin looked pale but no longer ice-blue. ‘What I care about is that you win, and that you don’t drag my name through shit if you don’t.’

‘Don’t you want to know why I left Sambo?’

Yakov hadn’t blinked. ‘Don’t you think I would already know?’ He’d leaned back in his armchair. They’d spent so many evenings in that living room, the windows tall and overlooking an affluent street of townhouses and small green parks. Viktor could see him sitting in that armchair now, growing sullen and ornery and grey. ‘You wouldn’t have come here if you thought I cared enough.’

Viktor stayed with him until he was twenty, until he had won enough golds and featured on the covers of enough sports magazines that Moscow and Sambo and his parents and everything else felt like some vague, distant memory.

He remembered the day when Yakov had signed his divorce papers with Lilia, a woman who was too sharp and too unhappy with the idea of being in love that their marriage had ended as diplomatically as it had begun. He remembered the day Yuri had bloomed into something that was worthy of Yakov’s attention, a pretty, spiteful little thing that made Viktor laugh. He remembered the day he had left, and his new apartment near St Isaac’s cathedral had felt cold and empty, and he had longed, reluctantly, for Yakov’s grumbling comments at the TV, and a bowl of beet-red _borscht_.

The house had been tall, and old, hot in the summer and cold in the winters, and the only warmth came from the grated fire in the living room and the old kitchen stove. The ceilings were high, and the curtains gathered dust and made Yakov cough and gave him one more thing to complain about. He liked to watch crime thrillers on TV late at night and wouldn’t speak to Viktor past 7 o’clock. Viktor hadn’t minded any of it, and sometimes he liked to imagine that Yakov could have appreciated the company.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he had said on his last day, on the doorstep, because Yakov was still his coach. His bags were sitting in a taxi behind him, blowing smoke out of a rumbling exhaust. He had more to his name than when he had left Moscow.

Yakov had looked at him strangely. He’d held his hand up, like, for a moment, he would put it on Viktor’s shoulder, or pull him into a hug, but instead he had done none of those things, and let it fall to his side. He had clenched a fist. Viktor had felt the ghost of a touch on his shoulder, and he remembered wishing it had been real.

‘Tomorrow,’ Yakov had said, and shut the door.

Viktor blinked at himself, now. He felt something pitted inside of him. Before Sascha had arrived, Yuuri had made up his life. He was not sure he wanted to think about any part of that life before. Not his time at Sambo. Not the seven years of a quiet apartment, Makkachin asleep on his legs as the TV ran in silence and cathedral bells rang in the distance. Not Yakov and his old townhouse and frowning face.

‘Viktor?’

Viktor lifted his head to Hatsuyo. He realised how tightly he was holding Yuuri, and let his arms loosen slightly. ‘Yes?’

She paused, looking at him like she was seeing something she wasn’t expecting to, and then said, ‘Yuuri and I have our places for the International Challenge in March. Sascha… doesn’t have a partner yet, so she’ll probably be missing that cup until the Nebelhorn in August.’

‘Russia takes on three teams for the Worlds and the Europeans,’ said Sascha, quietly. ‘It’ll be fine. It’s not like Japan, who only gets one team.’

‘Please don’t remind me,’ said Yuuri, weakly. He was warm in Viktor’s arms, and Viktor felt the overwhelming longing of wanting to take him upstairs and fall asleep with him, knowing that he would be the first thing he saw when he woke up.

Hatsuyo tapped the calendar. ‘I’ve booked us flights to Gangneung, too, for next month, and for Helsinki in April. We should go and watch the pair teams.’

South Korea were hosting the Four Continents, and Finland were hosting the Worlds. Viktor agreed that it was good to see the pair skaters they could be competing with, but the reality of it was jarring. In a year, it might be Yuuri and Hatsuyo on the ice in those same competitions. In a year, Sascha and Hatsuyo might have their wish.

Except Sascha still had no partner, and nothing was going to happen without it. Viktor looked at her, and she was leaning slightly against Hatsuyo. She was looking at the poster, and her face was composed, but her mouth was pulled down at the edges. Her eyes were sad. It was like she was looking at it, and seeing what Viktor was thinking. That she and Hatsuyo would have nothing if this did not succeed—that some dream would have failed before it had even begun.

Viktor felt his heart beat one long, uncomfortable beat, and he swallowed the pulse in his throat.

‘You must hate me,’ he said.

They all looked at him. Yuuri’s head was turned slightly. Sascha look was still.

‘I don’t hate you,’ she said. ‘You’re not obligated to do this. We didn’t… It’s your choice.’

‘It would be easy if I said yes.’

‘It would,’ she said, carefully. ‘But I’m not risking a PCS score because you can’t stand to skate with me.’

 _It’s not that,_ he thought. _It’s that if I skate with you I might like it. And if I forgive you then I might forget._

‘Yuri will be at the Worlds,’ said Yuuri, filling the silence that had fallen. ‘It could be his first win.’

‘He’ll win,’ said Viktor, and he could see the smile curving at the side of Yuuri’s face. Viktor wanted to kiss that mouth. There had been a point, they both knew, where they had wanted Yuri to win the Grand Prix Final.  Because it had been a lot, and it had been exhausting, and wasn’t there just one glimmer of exasperation? One thought of, _What if he did win?_ And the thought had brought with it something like relief.

It was then that Mari appeared, and Viktor knew that he was going to remember this moment in minute detail for the rest of his life. She was wearing an old t-shirt splattered with paint, and an apron haphazardly tied around her waist. She was carrying a tablet, and her hand was shaking. They looked up as she wandered over. There was something off about the way she was moving.

‘Yuuri,’ she said. Her voice, usually a little gruff and jaded, was distant.

‘Mari?’ Yuuri said, and he was pulling away from Viktor. There was something in his voice. It sounded like it had in Russia, when he’d received the call from her. It was the tone of a brother knowing that something was wrong, only because she was his sister.

‘Yuuri, it’s—You need to see this.’

She kneeled down next to them, but the movement was a jerky fall, and her kneels hit the wicker mats with a thud. She put the tablet down between them.

Staring up at them was a news article, the headline stark across the screen. A photo of them filled the page; it was Yuuri and Viktor, at Beijing, their lips pressed close, except their faces were blurred. Viktor remembered the feel of Yuuri in his arms. He remembered falling onto the ice and not remembering the impact. It hadn’t been their first kiss; that had been a private, quiet thing that was theirs. This, instead, had been a declaration.

Yuuri shift against Viktor. ‘I can’t—it’s in Russian,’ he said.

But Viktor could see what it said, and his heart was in his throat. Sascha could see it too. Mari was looking between the two of them, her face pale.

Sascha swallowed, her throat dry, and it clicked. ‘It—it’s about you and Viktor,’ she said. ‘It…’

‘ _Homosexuals continue to threaten sanctity of Russian sports_.’

Viktor heard his voice, and it was a hard, distant thing that he didn’t recognise.

Yuuri was still. ‘Well,’ he said. He let out a strange, shaken laughter that was too high. ‘At least they didn’t call us sodomites.’

‘They did,’ said Viktor. ‘I didn’t want you to know.’

Sascha was shaking her head. ‘What the hell is _Sovetsky Sport_ doing getting involved in politics,’ she muttered. Viktor could only think it was strange to think that this was politics. She said, again, ‘What the hell.’

‘Tell me what it says,’ said Yuuri. His breathing sounded forced. He was kneeling, leaning over the table, fingers sliding across the screen. Viktor didn’t want to see his face. ‘Tell me what it says.’

‘I can tell you what it will say without reading it,’ Sascha said. Her voice sounded tired, and impossibly old. Viktor had been out of Russia for a year—he’d forgotten what it could be like. What people could be like. He didn’t want to know what she’d faced. ‘It’s the same bullshit. And I can tell you that don’t want to read it, Yuuri.’

‘I hate this,’ Hatsuyo whispered. She was pressing her fingertips into her eyes, and Viktor could see the glistening of tears on her cheeks. ‘I fucking hate this.’

‘A recently retired Russian figure skater,’ Viktor murmured, staring at the screen over Yuuri’s shoulder. He could feel his phone buzzing in his coat pocket, and it wasn’t stopping. How many people were reading this? ‘Haven’t even got the decency to use my fucking name.’

‘Well, no,’ Sascha said, darkly. ‘Because that would be _slander_ , wouldn’t it? I just can’t believe… What the _hell._ ’

‘Do they know?’ Mari said. Viktor had never seen her look like this. ‘Do they know what you’re planning to do? Is that what this is?’

‘No,’ Viktor said. He watched as Yuuri swiped through the article, catching words that made his heart hitch. Suddenly, he was back at Sambo. Suddenly, Chenkov had a hand around his hair, pulling sharp away from his scalp, hot breath in his ear. Suddenly, he could hear a boy crying, and a crack.

_I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It was my fault._

_You’ve ruined me, Viktor._

‘No,’ Viktor whispered. He rested his forehead between Yuuri’s shoulder blades. They were both shaking. They had never had it like this before: this close. This real. It was like being touched with razor blades. ‘This isn’t about skating. This is just about who we are.’

Yuuri made a choked sound. ‘Is this how it’s going to be? After?’

‘No,’ Viktor said, hotly. ‘No, it’s—I won’t let it.’

‘I’m scared, Viktor.’

Viktor was pulling him around before he could even get the words out. Mari’s face had fallen. He could see Sascha pulling Hatsuyo into her.

 _So this is what it’s like,_ he thought. This was a new pain, so distinctly, cuttingly deep. It felt like it had reached his bones, like it knew where to find the parts of him that hurt the most. He knew, mostly, that it was because Yuuri was hurting, and suddenly that made it all worse. He didn’t know if he could carry it for both of them. He had to.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he murmured into Yuuri’s ear. ‘I’m going to be right by your side.’

Over Yuuri’s shoulder, Sascha was staring at him. Her eyes were hard. He knew that look. He used to share it with her once.

And now, he stared back at her, and thought he might be giving her the same look, even though it felt different.

He gave her one long, slow nod.

* * *

 

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Viktor said.

Hatsuyo was standing in the kitchen of the inn, wearing woollen layers and a pair of glasses. She held a cup of something steaming between her hands that smelled sweet and rich like melted chocolate.

‘Oh,’ she said. A red flush ran across her face. ‘Something like that.’

Viktor raised his eyebrows as he opened the industrial fridge door, but said nothing. It was 4 a.m. Everyone in the inn was sleeping, except them. Viktor had left Yuuri curled into himself in his bed and padded downstairs, stomach empty, mind too full. It had taken Yuuri a while to grow calm and quiet until, eventually, he had fallen asleep and exhausted in Viktor’s arms.

Only then Viktor hadn’t been able to sleep. His head was spinning. Watching Yuuri sleep was something he had taken pleasure in since the first time they had shared a room, the first time Yuuri’s head had fallen onto his shoulder on the train, the first time they had fallen exhausted onto the benches of the rink and just—switched off. But now he watched him and saw the bruises beneath red-rimmed eyes, and a lip that trembled as he slept.

_I’m scared, Viktor._

Viktor had closed his eyes, and it was all he could hear.

‘I wanted you to know,’ Hatsuyo said, staring down at her slippered feet, ‘that I support whatever decision you make, but I think you’re making the right one. Sascha and I respect that.’  

Viktor pilfered a piece of grilled chicken from the fridge and shut the door. He leaned back against the chrome surface, and chewed. ‘Sascha respects it,’ he said.

Hatsuyo shrugged, a small, half-offered thing. ‘She talks about you a lot, Viktor. Even when I barely knew her, she talked about you. She looked up to you so much.’

‘We weren’t friends.’

‘She knew that. She knows that. But she—she’s so sorry, Viktor. You don’t know how desperate she is for another chance.’

‘I don’t know if I’m ready to give her that.’

 _It’s been fifteen years_ , her eyes said. But instead what she said was, ‘Okay. I understand. She does too.’ She rested the mug on the central work surface, and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Things will be easy now. We can start getting you registered for the International Challenge. You can both start on your routine.’

Viktor stared at her. His eyes were stinging with tiredness, but he couldn’t bear to close them for too long.

‘You really think this will work,’ he said. ‘You really think you can do this.’

‘I really think we can do this.’ She smiled. ‘Call me a visionary.’

‘Or a lunatic.’

‘Or that,’ she agreed. ‘Yuuri must be proud of you.’

‘He’s still—shaken,’ said Viktor. Yuuri had held him so tightly as he’d spoken the words, as he’d finally agreed, not knowing if this was right, knowing that his mind felt static and he had never been more uncertain of anything before. But Yuuri had been holding him, and that had been enough, because he knew that despite the fact that he had said yes, despite the fact that the image of them had been defiled in some bizarre quest of sports journalism, being able to hold Yuuri exactly like that was not going to change. ‘He’s never had that kind of thing thrown at him before. I don’t think he realised just how… What it could be like.’

‘It’s why I want to do this,’ said Hatsuyo. ‘Because people don’t realise. And because people are hurting. People—people are dying. It—makes me sad. No. It makes me _angry_.’

‘Keep your head,’ said Viktor. ‘Don’t get caught up in emotion.’

She flushed. ‘Sascha always tells me that.’

‘I’m always saying it to Yuuri.’

She huffed a small laugh, and they both appreciated the strange moment of realising just how alike they were, a silence filled with old wood creaking in the wintry blusters, and the hum of a fridge generator. Four distinctly separate people, and yet still tethered in uncertain, odd ways.

What challenges they had yet to face. What things they might have to endure that could be worse than printed text on an electronic screen. They were going to have to be strong, but Viktor realised that, fundamentally, they already were. They had been prepared to do it before he had. And it had taken _this_ for him to change his mind.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ Yuuri had murmured, because Viktor had dared to voice these thoughts aloud before Yuuri drifted into exhausted, trembling sleep. _What matters is that you’re going to._ And then: _We’re going to make history._

‘You already did,’ Viktor had murmured, brushing his hair back from his face, pulling off his glasses with a gentle movement and placing them on the bedside. ‘But this time we’re going to go higher.’

Yuuri had laughed, a quiet, sleepy sound. ‘Excelsior,’ he’d whispered.

‘Hmm?’

But he was already asleep, and Viktor could not sleep, and would not. The word spun around his mind, and soon it had taken over the words of the article, and his memories of Chenkov and Sambo and a time that had been successful but doused in a kind of sharp cruelty that he hadn’t acknowledged until now.

He looked at Yuuri, his mouth parted a little, dark lashes brushing the arch of his cheekbones. He slept deeply, and Viktor hoped he as having sweet dreams.

Viktor thought that, probably, Yuuri had made it sound as simple and perfect and hopeful as it could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was reading quite a bit about instances of homophobia in Russia, and I came across [this podcast/audio discussion](https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/russias-new-scapegoats/) about LGBT people being used as scapegoats in Russia. There was one line I read in the transcript: "My friend committed suicide because of homophobia, then I understood that silence will not help anyone and I must speak for myself and for those who cannot speak themselves."
> 
> I just thought that was so important. I don't know... how effectively I'm portraying any of this. I hope I'm doing it justice at the very least, but I don't want this to just be about skating. Skating, I think, is just a conduit for the message lingering behind this whole story. It was this line that I wanted Viktor to embody: that it will reach a point, sometime, when you cannot stay silent anymore. That he has the opportunity to speak out for others, and it has reached the point where he needs to take it.
> 
> http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/153712048789/excelsior-819
> 
> Please click [Kudos ❤], leave a comment, or share if you enjoyed!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote almost the entirety of this chapter listening to _[Streets of Philadelphia](http://youtubeonrepeat.com/watch/?v=4z2DtNW79sQ)_ by Bruce Springsteen. It's from the motion picture _Philadelphia_ about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980's, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Having seen the film, and having felt what I did when I watched it, and then watching something like _Yuri on Ice_ , and last night's episode... it just gives me so much hope. I'd really, really recommend listening while you read.
> 
> [Talk to me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/)

##  **| Yuuri |**

Watching Viktor doing something new—something different—was like a feeling of breathlessness.

It shouldn’t have been surprising that Viktor was good. When Yuuri skated with Hatsuyo, it was a stumbling, unaware momentum that they followed—it was skating, for the most part, blind, and simply hoping for the best. 

Skating with Hatsuyo did not feel natural. It did not feel unnatural, either, but it was like Minako kept telling them: it was not about the individual anymore. It was splitting oneself in two, and trusting that the other person was splitting themselves too, so you ended up a whole made of two parts: of yourself, and of them.

Yuuri was not sure he had made the transition yet.

Hatsuyo was light, and Yuuri felt himself growing stronger. In Russia, Sascha said, skaters rarely trained by performing their whole routine. It was why, when it came to a competition, the skaters seemed so drained in those last few minutes, grasping onto a rapidly fading energy.

‘We rely on adrenaline,’ she told him. ‘First-time marathon runners rarely run the whole thing before the competition.’

Yuuri would have understood, except that he did not. To step onto the ice before judges and floodlights washing his skin pale and not know if he could make it to the end was... terrifying.

So he and Hatsuyo tried to skate the whole of their performance each day, each day adding another part of the jump or the lift, each day raising their doubles to triples, their triples into quads. It was the slow building of fractured pieces, but Yuuri found that piecing it together was not quite as hard as it should have been.

And then Viktor and Sascha stepped onto the ice, for the first time, a few days after the article in _Sovetsky Sport_ went viral. And Yuuri had to stare.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Hatsuyo, watching them, self-conscious.

Hatsuyo laughed, but he heard the tinge in it. How was it possible that Viktor, a single-skater for twenty years—more—could be like this?

How was it, that even when he held this blonde, pale girl in his arms like she belonged there, Yuuri’s heart was still sent into small spasms, his throat drying, goosebumps rushing across his skin? Yuuri watched it happen: the moment when Viktor became something other. The moment when he became something that Yuuri knew he would never quite be able to reach—to understand.

This Viktor was not a Viktor that Yuuri knew, and sometimes he was not sure he wanted to, because this Viktor was too much. The lines of his body grew into something that was new; the fingers, pressed into shape as he moved, were unfamiliar; the grace was of a language that Yuuri did not speak. And the eyes—his eyes were not eyes that Yuuri had looked into and ever expected anything back. More, they were not seeing Yuuri.

They were not even seeing Sascha as he lifted her into positions that had taken Yuuri and Hatsuyo weeks. They saw, apparently, nothing but ice, and music, and they were seeing a _feeling_. Yuuri did not know what that feeling was.

How was it possible?

‘They have a chance,’ said Yuuri, leaning on the perimeter.

‘So do we,’ said Hatsuyo, lightly.

Yuuri clenched his jaw. They were talking to one another, but it was not a conversation. The words, instead, fell somewhere in the space between them. They could not take their eyes off them. ‘What if we don’t get to the final?’ Yuuri said.

‘We will.’

‘But what if we don’t?’

‘ _They_ will,’ said Hatsuyo, like that was all that mattered. She didn’t sound like Yuuri was feeling. Hers was a kind of vague understanding, expectations having been met too exactly to be any source of surprise—of having known that this is exactly what they would have been like to watch. And then, almost breathlessly, ‘ _Look at them_.’

Yuuri was looking. He could do nothing but look. He felt like he should not be looking.

Hatsuyo and Yuuri let Viktor and Sascha have the ice for the afternoons. They did not stumble, but there were moments when Viktor would move just so, and Sascha would move another way, and their arguments would have been amusing if it had not been dangerous. A single shift, a slight change in balance, could bring one of them down. As a pair, it could bring both of them down.

Yuuri could see the tension in Viktor’s shoulders sometimes, skating with her. Because he was still a single skater: he was tethered to something that was wholly his own, and, more aptly, was not her. That made things difficult when his innovation had to suddenly be tethered to her. He could no longer move without it affecting her, and he could no longer move without _being affected_ by her. It was like, momentarily, seeing an angel clipped of its wings.

 _Tied,_ Yuuri thought quietly, watching. The uniform Axels, ice cutting in unison, the straight, perfect hold of the lift. _Not clipped. I can still see their shadow._

* * *

 

January was a late, darkening shadow as it edged closer to its end. Snow was piled high outside. The strange, soft warmth of December had been thrown out by a sharp bitterness that crept beneath Yuuri’s skin and clung to his bones. Where they would run to Ice Castle before, Mari would now drive them in her old yellow car to the rink, and Yuuri would cling to the sputtering heaters. Running wouldn’t have warmed them, and their bones and muscles would have been worse off for it.

‘Perfect,’ Minako said, on a darkening Sunday evening. She didn’t have to be there; she didn’t have to give up her time for them. This wasn’t her dream. Yuuri hadn’t even told her everything—it wasn’t his place. But she stayed, and gave them her time, and her attention. Yuuri thought, not for the first time, that he didn’t deserve it. What was he able to offer in return?

Viktor was holding Sascha in a carry lift. He could hold longer than Yuuri could, but Viktor had a strength beneath his pale skin that Yuuri had yet to uncover in himself. Yuuri’s power, as it lay with most skaters, was in his core, and in his thighs, bracing for a jump. He had not built himself for lifting someone else. It didn’t mean that Viktor didn’t comment on the gradual thinning of his waist, the muscle growing on his arms and across his shoulders as the weeks went on, and Yuuri didn’t mind. Viktor traced the route with his lips.

Minako liked to wander around the studio when they practised, eyes casting on the hold from every angle, checking for every vertical plane of a back, a straight leg; looking for the curve of a neck, and the careful poise of a hand. Sometimes she carried a stick with her, but others she would give a tap on the back of a knee, or beneath a chin.

 _Up,_ it said. _Lift. Straighten. More. More more more._  

Sometimes, Yuuri was not sure what more he had to give, and he would be trembling by the end of it, Hatsuyo shaking from it in his arms. But Viktor simply adjusted, a slight shift of his hip. Sascha simply followed, a new angle of her wrist. It was a remarkable thing to see them click into place like puzzle pieces, carefully worked beneath Minako’s hands and her wall of mirrors, until they were a whole new thing. Until looking at them in the mirrors was not like what Yuuri had been looking at moments ago, and looking became seeing. And seeing something that was, suddenly, perfect.

Viktor dropped Sascha at the word, and she was placed with a utilitarian care back on her feet. Viktor brushed himself down. There was a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead.

They had gone to the rink as the sun rose, steam creeping off the Hasetsu River, and the night was now deep and lasting. Sundays were always long and difficult. Tomorrow, they would rest, and in the evening skate half the free skate, or the whole of the short programme. Soon, the routines would feel like breathing, and Yuuri would not feel his heart skip before a lift. They were the only things holding him back.

At a gesture from Minako, Yuuri and Hatsuyo moved into the middle of the studio, while Viktor and Sascha moved to the edges to observe.  

‘We’ve been working on our lateral twist lift,’ said Hatsuyo, tucking back dark strands of hair into a tight bun. ‘I just can’t get high enough to make the third rotation.’

They’d been trying for the whole week, on the sides of the rink while Viktor and Sascha pieced together the elements of their routine. Minako’s choreography and their technical components were falling together into a seamless, woven strand, a piece of sewn-together fabric that didn’t even show the stitches. It was a fluid, moving thing, like the eddy of water in a fast-running river. And Hatsuyo and Yuuri were still stuck on a lift that they couldn’t hope to make into quad, standing on the surface of a river that had frozen and refused to move.

Minako’s face, immediately, was thoughtful. Twist lifts were notoriously difficult, not because they were difficult to _do_ so much as because practicing them came with dangers. Off ice, skaters lost the momentum and speed for the lift. On ice, the chances of a fall or a loose grip could be catastrophic.

‘Show me,’ said Minako.

Sascha and Viktor were watching closely; Yuuri could feel their eyes on him.

Hatsuyo backed up slightly, and Yuuri set his feet shoulder-width apart, hands ready. She came at him fast, a cartwheel across the floor that helped build the speed, and then suddenly her hips were against Yuuri’s palms and he was lifting her upwards, a fast, determined _push_. Her body was a blur of grey clothes and dark hair as it spun—once, twice, stuttered on the third, almost vertical to the floor—and Yuuri was moving forward and catching her, waist in his hands, a slight stagger.

She breathed heavy for a moment, regaining her balance. Yuuri let go of her as she wiped an arm across her forehead, while Minako frowned.

‘For starters, you aren’t bending your knees enough, Yuuri,’ said Minako.

‘It’s where you hold her,’ Sascha said. Yuuri turned to her. ‘You need your hands lower on Hatsuyo’s hips. The lower your hold, the more room you have to extend your arms, the more momentum, and the more you can propel her.’

Minako was nodding. ‘In ballet, the hold needs to be made more towards the waist, just below the ribcage. But that’s a lift—you don’t want to hold onto her, Yuuri. You’re not there to keep her stable and secure. You want to be able to build up enough momentum to let her go high enough.’

‘Speed will help too on the ice,’ Viktor added.

‘Yes, well done,’ said Sascha, dry.

Yuuri might have laughed if he hadn’t felt frustrated with himself. It sounded obvious now. Of course it was the hold. It was physics; it was fundamental and empirical. Why hadn’t he been able to see it? He thought, probably, that he knew why: simply, he was not a pair skater, and he had never had to think like one. He was having to go against his instincts, and it was strange, and unsettling, and made it feeling like he was wading through dark water, not knowing what might be swimming around his ankles.

‘We’ll demonstrate,’ said Sascha, and she and Viktor took their place at the centre of the mats.

Viktor stood with none of the nervousness that Yuuri knew he showed as Hatsuyo would approach. Instead, his eyes were limpid, his hands open calmly, waiting to receive Sascha as if she were a lightly tossed pillow and not a body made of soft flesh and easily breakable bone.

Sascha’s cartwheel was a blur. She had barely touched Viktor’s waiting hands before she was twisting in the air, higher than Yuuri thought someone could go off the ice. She barely staggered on the landing, and she was on her feet for barely a moment before Viktor was stepping away. Yuuri saw his fists clench, once.

‘See?’ said Minako. Yuuri noticed, then, that she was watching Sascha with a strange kind of intensity. But he couldn’t think about it; it was gone in a blink. ‘Perfect.’

Yuuri saw Hatsuyo flinch at the word. To him, it didn’t matter. He’d been lifting for barely a month. It wasn’t _going_ to be perfect. And frankly, Yuuri would have been concerned if it was: he wouldn’t have known what he was doing right. More importantly, he wouldn’t know what to do when something went wrong.

‘Again,’ said Hatsuyo, as she and Yuuri stood back into place.

They went again. Yuuri bent his knees. He placed his hands lower, felt the added length of the trajectory as he propelled her upwards. But they miscalculated, and her timing clashed with his; he was ready to lift her before she had even bent her knees, and the result was an awkward throw that barely got a twist in before she staggering back onto her feet.

She smoothed her hair back with a jerked motion. ‘ _Again_ ,’ she said.

Yuuri cast a glance at Viktor, who was watching quietly. He met Yuuri’s eyes, and gave a small, imperceptible nod. All right then.

They went again. Their timings matched this time, and Yuuri did everything Sascha and Minako had told him to. But Hatsuyo’s core wasn’t centered enough; she couldn’t twist herself enough, and she was barely righting herself before she was falling back down again. It did not promise to be soft.

Yuuri was already moving and—a blur rushed past him, and suddenly Hatsuyo was falling down heavily into Sascha’s arms with a dull sound of impact. Sascha made a low noise like the breath had been knocked from her. A moment of shaking, heavy silence passed.

‘I think that’s enough,’ said Viktor, quietly, as Sascha set Hatsuyo down. He was looking at Yuuri, who was shaking slightly, his arms aching from the lifts. He didn’t think he could do it again. In this state, it was a waste of their time—neither of them were focused, and someone, soon, was going to end up getting hurt. Yuuri remembered the look in Hatsuyo’s eyes when she said she had been injured before Sochi.

‘Again,’ said Hatsuyo, stepping away from the cradle of Sascha’s arms.

There was a pause. Minako cleared her throat. ‘Maybe if Viktor and Sascha—’

‘No,’ Hatsuyo said, a sharp word that cut through the mirrored studio. ‘I _know_ that Sascha’s _perfect_ at it, all right? I know.’

‘They might be able to—’

Hatsuyo snapped. ‘I said _no,_ didn’t I? Do I need to say it in Japanese for you to _understand_?’

‘That’s _enough_ , Hatsu.’

It was Sascha’s voice, and it was a hard voice that it didn’t echo, but fell flat, and dull, and Yuuri felt it under his skin. The way that Hatsuyo stilled, Yuuri knew she must have too.

‘I’m sorry,’ Hatsuyo said quietly, as seconds slipped past them with a quiet throb. ‘I think—I think I’ve had enough. For today. Just—just enough.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Minako quietly.

For a moment, it seemed no one knew what to do, or to say.

But as if someone had posed a question, Sascha nodded, and gathered hers and Hatsuyo’s things from the corner of the studio. They pulled their shoes on with quiet movements, Hatsuyo’s shoulders turned in on themselves, and Yuuri watched as Sascha placed a hand on the small of her back, and led her out into the cold. They left a heavy silence in their wake.

‘Well,’ said Minako, when the door clicked shut. She rubbed a hand on the back of her neck. ‘That was…’

‘Not your fault,’ said Yuuri. ‘The Challenge is in two months. She’s nervous.’

‘I can’t help her if she snaps at me,’ Minako said with a shrug. The shrug said that she didn’t really care, but Yuuri knew to look at Minako’s eyes when she wanted to hide the truth of something, and her eyes were down, and away.

With a sigh, Viktor started piling the mats up into a stack against one of the back mirrors, and then he and Yuuri pulled on their shoes. Viktor wrapped a scarf around Yuuri’s neck, and Yuuri slipped the buttons through their eyelets on Viktor’s coat, letting his hands rest on his chest for a brief moment, feeling the steady rise and fall of it. It was centering.

Minako turned the lights off behind them, and her parting was subdued as she headed upstairs to her apartment, feet scuffing on the staircase. A ballerina did not let her feet trail. Yuuri did not know what to say, and Viktor was already pulling him out into the cold, sharp and eye-watering.

They walked fast back to the inn, careful to avoid the patches of ice along the streets. Snow was lit up in small bursts of orange light as they walked under the streetlamps, and as it fell it looked like falling stars. Their breath, coming out in billows of hot, curling air, was the quiet cloud of a spirit left to drift into a wintry nothingness.

Yuuri walked with his arm around Viktor’s waist, Viktor’s around his shoulder. They could not press closer against each other if they tried, and the burst of warmth would have been wonderful if it did not make the rest of him feel so cold.

When they were a few streets away from the inn, Yuuri heard the first, straining sounds of whispering. He tugged on Viktor’s arm, and they slowed, their feet silent as they approached.

The houses were old down the small side-streets, the wood aged, the walls slanting slightly with age so that the street gave the impression of leaning into itself. Curtains were drawn, and most of the houses were quiet in their darkness. Occasionally a soft light would creep from beneath a curtain or a shutter, but most of the town had gone to sleep to hope for a brighter, warmer day.

Snow had not been cleared from some of the narrower streets, and it was why Yuuri could make out the softly illuminated footprints that led down to where Hatsuyo and Sascha were standing.

Sascha had her hands cupping Hatsuyo’s face, both of them shadowed by awnings and slanting roofs, but the light from a street lamp was cut in sharp relief onto Hatsuyo’s face. Yuuri could make out the wetness on her cheeks.

He felt the sudden realisation that he should not have been watching, that this was not his to see. It was like pushing aside a curtain to get a glimpse of something personal, and private, and closed off from other people’s eyes. And he would have drawn back, except Viktor’s chest was hard on his back, his hands gripping Yuuri’s arms, and Yuuri understood that he wanted to see this.

‘We shouldn’t,’ he whispered, but Viktor wasn’t listening. He was watching them, gaze unfathomable.

‘I just wanted it to be easy,’ Hatsuyo was saying. Her voice wasn’t loud, but the town was submerged beneath a wintry silence, where nothing but car doors and engines and the low sound of voices could be heard. This cold, this dark, the birds were silent.

‘Easy?’ said Sascha, tucking a strand of Hatsuyo’s hair behind her ear. ‘Beautiful, you knew it wouldn’t be.’

‘I know. I know. I wanted it to be.’

‘If it was easy, you wouldn’t want it,’ Sascha was saying. She brushed a tear away as one might pick a morning glory from its vine in the first blushing moments of summer. Her voice was intensely intimate. ‘You’ve always liked the fight. You fought me every way.’

‘Because you liked the chase,’ said Hatsuyo. ‘And the risk.’

‘The risk,’ Sascha said. ‘You have no idea.’

‘I do. I know what you’ve risked. What you’ve given. You’re giving me this and I—don’t deserve it.’

‘Let me make that decision, Hatsu. I wanted to follow you. Me. You never made me. This is about us. Doing it together.’

Hatsuyo squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Your parents hate you because of me.’

‘No,’ said Sascha steadily. ‘My parents hate me because of _me._ ’

The words hit heavy inside of Yuuri. He knew what she was saying. Viktor had told him that Sascha was cast out by her parents even before she fully knew Hatsuyo, but he sensed there was something more.

 _They gave me a choice,_ she seemed to be saying. _After. And I still chose you._

‘But what they didn’t realise,’ Sascha continued, touching Hatsuyo’s face again, like she couldn’t help but touch the soft skin of her cheeks, of her brow, a thumb grazing across her lip, ‘was that _I_ gave me _you_. And that’s something they could never give me. And if I don’t have them, but I have you and your family, then that’s all I’d ever want.’

Hatsuyo’s voice was choked, and trembling. ‘I want this to be everything I promised it would be, and I don’t know if I can. I want to be enough for you.’

Sascha’s breath was low. ‘Oh, _iubita mea_ ,’ she whispered. Her voice was full of wonderment, and Yuuri didn’t think Sascha, sharp as a blade and as ready to cut, could sound like that. ‘Don’t you know you already are?’

* * *

 

Viktor and Yuuri drew away softly, feet quiet despite the crunch of salt and grit beneath their shoes. They didn’t talk until they were a few streets away, until the inn was in sight.

‘I didn’t think she’d be so… _strung_ ,’ said Yuuri, thinking about Hatsuyo’s easy smiles, her vague wistfulness. She had an air about her that was soft. Out of all of them, he thought she had been the one that saw this whole thing as nothing but an opportunity; some noble, triumphant endeavour. Yuuri couldn’t decide if it made him more or less comforted to know that she was just as afraid as they all were. More. After all, this mad, stumbling effort they were making through the dark was because of her.

‘I told you not to underestimate them,’ said Viktor. ‘They’ll hold all sorts of nasty little secrets.’

Yuuri knew Viktor was joking, but it had the strange impact of not really feeling much like a joke at all. Hatsuyo’s voice in the studio had been a sharp, cutting thing—something Yuuri had not expected to hear on her tongue. And then the way her face had looked down the street, crumpled in the lamplight, wet with tears… Yuuri didn’t know what to do with that kind of look.

‘I’m not like that, am I?’ Yuuri said, thinking about the sharpness. The way she had seen something between Sascha and Minako and made something out of it that was more— _worse_. ‘Jealous?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Viktor. ‘Are you?’

He thought, at first, that Viktor was teasing him. That it was rhetorical. But he could see the slight, curious tilt of Viktor’s head that he wore when he was trying to figure something out. Mostly, he wore that look when he was watching Yuuri anyway, but it did not normally come with a question.

 _He really can’t figure me out sometimes,_ Yuuri thought, with some small, quiet delight.

‘I don’t think so,’ Yuuri said. ‘I know you’re mine.’

Viktor’s smile was a serene thing. ‘Yes,’ said Viktor.

* * *

 

They ate dinner together in the kitchens. The inn stopped serving food that late, but Yuuri managed to warm them up leftover miso soup while Viktor steamed a plate of greens in ginger dressing. They shared it with a bottle of _sake_ and a bowl of sticky sesame rice.

They ate, standing, leaning against the counters, and Yuuri was aware of Viktor watching him. Above them, the lights were low and flickering, and most of the room was dark and shadowed. The inn was quiet. Most of the guests were in bed, and most of the customers had left by now to make the cold walk back to their homes, before it grew colder.

‘What?’ said Yuuri. Viktor was watching him—had been watching him since they’d left Ice Castle.

‘What are you thinking about?’ said Viktor.

‘Who said I’m thinking about anything?’

‘You’re always thinking about something—more than anyone else I’ve ever known.’

 _That’s not a good thing_ , Yuuri thought. He ate a stalk of _pak choi_ , and swallowed, and blinked. ‘Why are you so good at pair skating?’ he said. The question had been pressing close on him since his and Sascha’s first practice, when Yuuri had been struck into a dumb silence. ‘How do you know the lifts?’

Viktor took a mouthful of soup, and pressed the back of his hand to his lips. He was not looking at Yuuri anymore. ‘Can I not be innately talented?’

Yuuri’s answering tone was flat: ‘You’re good. No, you’re… But you’re not that good.’

The laugh was quiet, and huffed, but not much of Viktor’s body moved with it, and Yuuri couldn’t tell if Viktor’s eyes were shining or not. His hair was growing longer, brushing across an eye. Yuuri wondered if he was going to grow it out again, and he imagined how it would feel to run his fingers through it.

‘Sambo,’ said Viktor. ‘When you’re young, you have pair skating lessons alongside the singles.’

‘But you left Sambo when you were, what, fifteen?’

Viktor shrugged, and Yuuri realised there was nothing arrogant about the motion. Viktor wasn’t a particularly arrogant person, but Yuuri knew it was easy for him to seem like it. Where skating was sometimes made up of technical, fundamental parts that needed understanding and slow processing, Viktor took to them as if he could breathe them in like air. And he could never explain why. He could only shrug. It irritated Yuuri, but not as much as it filled him with awe. He supposed that was what it was like to _be_ natural at something, and not have it be the product of raw, blistering hard work.

‘It stuck with me,’ Viktor said, simply. ‘I’d wanted to pair at one point. I thought that was going to be the route I would take.’

‘What changed?’

‘Nothing changed,’ said Viktor. ‘Rather… I was too much like myself. A perfectionist. I couldn’t rely on someone else to reach the same standards I set myself. They’d never reach them. I became frustrated with the partners the coaches at Sambo put me with. And they—didn’t like me.’

‘Because you were too good?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Viktor. He was pensive. Yuuri felt like he was being given a glimpse into some part of Viktor that he rarely let anyone else see. The exclusivity of it made every part of him feel warm with a private sort of pleasure. ‘But once I understood things weren’t going to work out, I just… ignored them. They’d... outlived their use. I saw no reason to interact with them. I thought that was the easiest thing to do. By the time Yakov started teaching me, I’d stopped trying to skate with anyone else. The teachers couldn’t berate me because I was too good at singles. It wasn’t like I had to make up for anything.’

It filled Yuuri with a strange feeling. Of knowing, at one point, that Viktor had been like that. Of knowing that, once, he had been exactly what Yuuri feared he would be: someone who discarded things that had no use or purpose that didn’t directly benefit him. Not things—people.

 _Yuuri, you have my heart._ He heard the words now, felt them resound in some deep part of him that they had the first time. It was like something, a small flame, had been lit in him, and was refusing to go out. It was burning brighter than the doubt.

‘Also,’ said Viktor, ‘I liked the limelight when I won for singles. I liked the attention. It was different.’

‘Different?’

‘To Sambo. Where everyone was so… painfully introspective. Praise was rare, and praise from your peers was rarer. You couldn’t expect any encouragement from anyone.’ He raised a cup of _sake_ towards Yuuri. ‘You were lucky,’ he said, ‘to have a friend like Phichit.’

 _No,_ Yuuri thought, a little sadly. _You were unlucky to have had no one._

‘And now?’ he asked. ‘It’s different now? With Sascha?’

‘It’s different.’

‘But why? Why are you willing to do it now?’

‘Because I’m not doing it for me, anymore,’ Viktor said. ‘It’s not about me.’

But Yuuri knew that was not strictly true, and he could not stop thinking about it: what it was going to be like, when Viktor and Sascha reached the Worlds. When their name was called out, and Hatsuyo was to slip, subversive onto the ice at Sascha’s side, and take Viktor’s place. Yuuri could not stop thinking about the same question: would he let her?

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Viktor.

‘No, you don’t,’ said Yuuri. ‘You’re always asking what I’m thinking.’

Viktor’s eyes were soft, and fond. ‘Mostly because I want you to tell me. I drive myself mad with possibilities. I never know if I’ve got the right one.’

Yuuri wondered if Viktor wanting him to tell him was something to do with silence, and how Viktor had always been too used to it. An empty apartment. Peerless, friendless. And how, with Yuuri, he probably didn’t want to be used to it. Yuuri wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to be.

‘What am I thinking then?’ Yuuri asked. _Indulge me,_ his voice said. _Surprise me, like you always do._ ‘If you’re so sure this time.’

Viktor folded his arms. His gaze was unwavering. ‘You’re thinking I’ll change my mind. That I’ll stake a claim for the title. That I won’t carry this through the whole way. That I’m too ambitious to give it up at the last moment.’

‘Are you?’ said Yuuri, pushing Viktor for the question, as Viktor had pushed him on the way back to the inn.

‘What you’re asking me is: “Me or the medal?”’

Yuuri couldn’t say anything, because that _was_ what he was asking, but the words—saying them, feeling them on his tongue, would feel like a betrayal.

‘It’s you, Yuuri,’ said Viktor. He was stepping forward now, and the distance between them, as they leant their hips against the counter, was gone. Viktor’s palm had cupped his cheek, warm, and soft, and Yuuri felt himself towards it, seeking it out. His eyes drifted to a close. ‘It’s always, _always_ going to be you.’

‘I know,’ said Yuuri. ‘I know that. I do. I just—’

He couldn’t say it. How could he explain what it was like to have never had this, and then to have it, suddenly, breathlessly, forever?

There was a moment, closed-mouthed, heavy, where Yuuri thought Viktor might kiss him. It would have been the thing to do, and Yuuri would have welcomed it.

But Viktor did not. Instead, Yuuri felt the shift in air as Viktor stepped away, as the hand fell from his cheek, leaving the trailing warmth of his fingertips. He felt something sink in disappointment at the loss of it.

Yuuri opened his eyes. And stared.

Viktor was on his knees. Viktor had a hand on the outside of Yuuri’s thigh.

Every thought escaped him.

They had done this before, and for a while it had been all they had done, since Viktor would give him nothing else. And yet—the sight of him, silver hair glinting in the dim light, the face, serenity of biblical proportions, upturned to meet Yuuri’s gaze, lips fallen slightly open, wet with anticipation. And his eyes. Those eyes. It was like falling.

 _Viktor,_ he wanted to say. _You don’t have to._

But he didn’t say it. He could only think—could only feel Viktor’s hands on the lining of his trousers, knuckles brushing against the skin of stomach. He could only feel the way they pulled down, fabric moving over his thighs, until he was half-naked, and Viktor was kneeling on the floor of his parents’ kitchen.

‘It’s dirty,’ Yuuri mumbled. _Someone could walk in._

Viktor’s eyes, for barely a second, glanced up to his. He said, ‘Precisely.’ And opened his mouth.

Yuuri’s head hit the wooden post behind him, and his eyes rolled back. The sudden heat; the wetness. Yuuri was struggling to stay present. Viktor’s throat was working around him, and he barely made a sound.

Yuuri forced his eyes open—forced himself to look down. He regretted the decision immediately: the length of him, disappearing slowly between Viktor’s lips, the drag back, a slow, wet trail. Viktor had his eyes closed, and there was a small line between his brows. Concentration, Yuuri thought at first, but no—his eyes opened, and when they flicked upwards, met Yuuri’s, he realised what it was.

Unfathomably, he was as lost in this as Yuuri was. 

Yuuri forced himself to still; everything was a tense battle within him. His fists clenched, shaking at his side. Everything was shaking. A tongue, swollen and bitten. Sound carried too well, and he was conscious of every breath, every sharp inhalation, every exhale that shuddered and sounded too much like a moan. The wet slide of Viktor’s lips on his cock; the shift of fabric. He heard it all, and yet could hear nothing.

His skin felt like static, alive and ready to shock. Viktor shocked him. He was willing to do this for him. He _was_ doing this for him.

He was immediately aware when things changed, when Viktor’s movements changed from their slow, unhurried drag that made Yuuri press half-moons into his palms with his fingernails, to something that could not stop Yuuri from letting out a small sound like a sob.

It was too much. With Viktor, it was always too much. Viktor had given him this feeling; he had shown him what love was, and something more. Yuuri couldn’t bear for it to stop.

Viktor was moving faster, hot slides that let Yuuri’s cock bump against the back of his throat, a fast drag backwards, the recovery, a breath of air through his nose—and then again. Rhythm unceasing. Viktor was tasting him; savouring him, hot and heavy on his tongue, a faint, underlying saltiness. Could he taste how much Yuuri needed this?

This was not something Yuuri could escape from, and he forced his hips to still, his hands to bite into the edge of the counter behind him—forced himself to be restrained, not to lock his fingers through Viktor’s hair and rock into it like Viktor wasn’t giving everything to him, for him.

 _Restrained_ , something whispered, laughing at him.

Because he could feel it too, pressing on him. He could see too clearly how Viktor’s eyes looked when they met his, some terrible honesty in them that Yuuri hoped was staring back from his own.

It came before he could stop it, a slow rise within him like an avalanche. It came when Viktor’s tongue circled around the head of him, when he let him slide against the curve of his tongue, when Viktor made a quiet noise that sent shockwaves through him, when Viktor swallowed around him like it was possible.

Yuuri choked. ‘Viktor, stop, I’m—’

But he didn’t. Instead, impossibly, his throat opened, let him in deeper, lips tightening, and he _moaned_.

Yuuri broke apart.

Viktor did not let go—he did not remove himself, and Yuuri, when he could bring himself to open his eyes again, was left with the sight of Viktor, lips smiling around his cock, eyes bright, his seed on his tongue.

He drew back, and the slide made Yuuri tremble. And he watched as Viktor swallowed, and Yuuri could not stop shaking.

‘Do you understand?’ Viktor said, bringing himself to his feet. His voice was low, and ruined. He did not brush his knees down. Instead, he ran a thumb over his lips, as if to catch any lingering trace, and pressed the same hand, again, to Yuuri’s cheek. It was like it hadn’t happened. Except that Viktor’s pupils were blown, and his lips were stained red, and when he kissed Yuuri, open-mouthed, lingering, Yuuri could taste himself—the quiet evidence of what had just been. What, for a moment, had been made between them.

‘You can’t use sex to prove a point,’ Yuuri whispered, when Viktor parted, and was staring at him. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Go on then,’ said Viktor. His eyes were full and shining. ‘Tell me to stop.’

Yuuri, predictably, did not.

* * *

 

Whatever quiet, heavy thing had lurked between Sascha and Hatsuyo, it was not there a week later. Their sessions with Minako were professional and structured, and Minako became a commentator, an unbiased observer. Hatsuyo and Yuuri, at last, made the twist, and applying it on ice became the next step. Viktor and Sascha knew the structure of their routine, and for them all that was needed now was practice: they needed to be able to predict each other.

So far, they had been travelling separate roads, expecting the other to meet them at some waypoint, and growing angry and irritated when they were not there.

‘Arm _out,_ Viktor. Not on my hip.’

‘If I hold you with one arm I’ll drop you.’

‘Half the work is mine, Vitya. Trust me. I can hold myself if you use one arm.’

And were those not words they threw around often enough? _Trust me._

Viktor would say nothing, turn his head away, and when Sascha made a wrong move, assumed something, he would throw it back at her: _Trust me._

Yuuri could hear, every time they said it, Viktor’s words: _Don't underestimate them._ Were Sascha and Hatsuyo thinking the same? When they retired to their rooms in the evening, or went into Saga during an afternoon of rest, were they saying the same to each other?

‘This would be much easier,’ said Yuuri, ‘if you could stop thinking like a single skater. You’re not competing with her. You’re not competing with us. We’re all sharing the same goal.’

‘When it matters,’ said Viktor, ‘I’ll pretend to be half in love with her. For now, I’m not sure I want that.’ His eyes said, _I’m not sure you want that._

Yuuri didn’t. He knew it was a ruse, that it was part of the routine: some canonised, heterosexual precedence in skating. But to hear Viktor say it—it settled wrongly inside of him. What was it going to be like, he wondered, to see them on the ice together, when it mattered? Viktor could transform himself too well on the ice—off it, too. Yuuri wasn’t sure he was going to be able to bear watching it; the unity, the tender brushes of a hand across a pale cheek. Viktor was a good actor when he wanted to be, and Yuuri knew looking at it would feel like seeing it. It was going to be all too real.

But for now, another pretence. Another mirage. Someone had spotted them, someone had noticed that the entry names of the International Cup were a little off that year. That the national representatives of the pair skaters were not quite as they should be. The genius of modern skating history, and the most recent Grand Prix Champion, a breaker of single skating boundaries, skating pairs?

Viktor had received the call the day before from _International Figure Skating_ : Was it true? Was he really pair skating? Was this how he was making his return to the ice? Don’t answer that. We’ve sent a team to Japan. They’ll be with you tomorrow. Look pretty.

Yuuri hated interviews. He hated that he had to somehow be someone that people wanted to know about, and yet remain true to himself at the same time. Surely, the two were not the same. How did Viktor ever reach that kind of harmony? Were they, for him, two different entities that he managed to press into one for the cameras? Were they the same, and he tempered one part, and enhanced another?

‘Just be yourself,’ said Viktor, squeezing his arm. ‘You’re telling them nothing new.’

‘I’m not telling them everything.’

‘When have we ever told a journalist everything? Are they entitled to know?’

‘No, but—’

‘But nothing,’ Viktor said. He brushed his knuckles across Yuuri’s jaw. ‘Breathe,’ he said. ‘And if you want, let me say everything. I’m sure Sascha and I can come up with something diverting.’

Both of their hair was now long enough to be tied, and Viktor wore his in a short plait that he could lace without a mirror, and Yuuri’s was half-tied into a ponytail. Viktor seemed somewhat arrested at the sight of him, when he had emerged from the bathroom, and Yuuri had to admit that he was feeling something that must have been quite the same.

They were interviewed in the small function room at the inn. Normally, people hired it out for for birthdays, or it was used for a local conference or meeting, and the businessmen could use the _onsen_ around the work commitment.

A few hours after the team from _IFS_ arrived, it was fitted with lights and a small table and a sponsor board behind it as the backdrop. The microphones were fitted to the lapels of their suit jackets and the necklines of the girls’ dresses, and a makeup artist wandered towards them.

‘Well,’ she said, with a distinct American accent. ‘Don’t you all look flawless anyway?’

‘Sorry to put you out of a job, Alice,’ said Viktor. Apparently, Viktor knew the team already; they had been given the exclusive release that Viktor was to retire after his last World entry. Apparently, Viktor and the lead reporter did not get on—and Viktor seemed to get along with everyone.

They sat at the table after a few more technical checks, and the reporters sat across from them on a row of chairs. It felt strange, to Yuuri, having something that was a by-product of his job in his home. He wanted them to leave. He wanted to do this at Ice Castle, where everything was separated into its own, distinct units, where he could separate the parts of his life and have them make sense.

‘It gives it… authenticity,’ the reporter had said, casting his eyes around the inn, taking in its wooden ceilings, the tokens and the statues and the bottles of _sake_. It was all very, very Japanese. Yuuri wondered what this reporter was thinking of his home, and if he cared.

He couldn’t say no to any of this. He was giving the four of them publicity, and his mother wanted the customers and the free advertising.

The questions started easy, as Viktor predicted. _He’ll lull you in,_ he’d said, _and then act like it doesn’t matter when he goes for the kill. Flattery has got him further with others than it has with me._

How were they? How did they celebrate the New Year? How was Viktor's stay going in Japan?

‘It’s not a stay,’ said Viktor. A momentary pause. The questions continued.

Sascha was sitting a little low in her seat by the time the questions became anything close to focused. Hatsuyo was drawing circles with a biro into her napkin. Yuuri’s stomach was in knots.

‘So,’ said the reporter, at last. He was a tall, thin man, and had dark eyes that looked on the four of them with a strange kind of voraciousness. It was a heavy kind of _so_ , and Sascha straightened. Viktor steepled his fingers. ‘Would you like to confirm the speculation over your entries as pair skaters into the International Challenge?’

‘It’s not speculation, Matthew,’ said Viktor, breezily. ‘Entries and confirmed representative teams are public. As they always have been.’ _Don’t make this sound like something it’s not,_ was the underlying message.

If the reporter, Matthew, noticed, he said nothing. ‘Why the change?’ he said. ‘You’ll be twenty-nine in a year.’

‘I don’t look it, do I?’ Viktor said. An affable smile lay across his mouth. Yuuri thought it would probably look good on camera when this went live later. The whole town, he knew, would be pressed around the inn’s TV screens. ‘Sometimes it’s time for a change. Let’s call it… a midlife crisis.’

Beside him, Sascha snorted. ‘There’s nothing to stop a skater from flexing their boundaries and their capabilities,’ she said. ‘Pair skaters in their thirties have won golds. Zhao Hongbo was thirty-six at Vancouver.’

‘And those pairs have been skating _as_ pairs for a much longer time,’ Matthew said. ‘To change this late in the game is… unprecedented.’

‘It’s dangerous,’ Viktor said, ‘but I do like to keep people on their toes.’

Matthew brushed the comments away. They were too full of subtext, and Yuuri doubted that Matthew wanted people to be making interpretations. They were meant to be thinking what Matthew wanted them to think—not what Viktor was trying to imply.

Matthew’s gaze slid to Yuuri, and he felt a moment of choking breathlessness. Why, every time, was it so difficult to just _breathe_? Viktor’s arm was draped across the back of his chair, and Yuuri felt the casual brushing of fingertips over his spine.

‘And yourself, Yuuri?’ Matthew said. ‘To be a mentee and then suddenly a rival. How does that affect your… relationship?’

His voice fell strangely around the word, and Yuuri didn’t know how to react to it.

It was Sascha, in the end, who did, and it surprised them all. ‘A skater’s personal life and personal decisions aren’t really up for discussion. We’re here to answer questions about skating, not give gossip to the tabloids.’

‘Of course.’

‘If you want to know anything,’ said Sascha, ‘then ask questions that we might be more inclined to answer.’

‘Of course,’ Matthew said again. ‘But you understand, of course, how speculation might form over your decision to compete this way.’

‘Speculation?’ said Hatsuyo, frowning, pen still in her hand. ‘What speculation?’

Matthew shared a glance with one of his fellow reporters. ‘It is understood that, Sascha and Hatsuyo, the two of you are... an item?’

‘We will not and have never been willing to answer questions of a personal nature,’ said Hatsuyo, flatly. Her tone, when she wanted it to be, was hard and totally unyielding. Yuuri was coming to understand that she could be a little ruthless when she wanted to be. In some strange way, she reminded him of Viktor.

Sometimes, during their sessions, they would slip into conversation. Mostly about Sascha and Viktor, because that was easy, but sometimes about themselves. Yuuri was coming to understand her, letting her flesh out into a real person. Her father, she’d told him, was a first generation Japanese-Canadian ice hockey player. A good one, apparently. She was surprised Yuuri hadn’t heard of him. She’d grown up on the ice, like Yuuri, but where his first tentative steps had been made on his own, she had slipped onto it with her hand in her father’s palm.

‘I think he thought I’d maybe go into ice hockey,’ she told him. ‘Or speed skating. Or—or something that wasn’t _figure skating_ , you know?’

‘But figure skating is big in Canada, isn’t it?’

‘It’s not about popularity—and yes, but ice hockey is bigger. It’s… it’s about the movement of it. Ice hockey is hard. It’s fast. It can be brutal. I think my dad thought that if I was a part of that, it would strengthen me somehow. Or… No.’ She’d straightened up from a stretch. Her expression was far off. ‘He wanted me to love something that he loved. My mother died when I was very young, and I think he thought that if we couldn’t share ice hockey, then it would be difficult to share anything.’

‘Being a parent isn’t about having to share everything,’ Yuuri said. ‘Your children are supposed to be their own people, not some imitation of yourself.’

He thought about his father, who had lived in Hasetsu his whole life, and not stepped on the rink at Ice Castle once. He’d never put on a pair of skates when the lakes out of the town froze up. He’d never felt the pull of it—the way the ice called for movement.

They spoke differently; their dreams were different; the _scale_ of their dreams was different. Namely, what Yuuri wanted, his father did not.

 _There’s nothing wrong with that,_ his sister would say, and they’d watch their father as he’d wander around the inn, glasses skewed, counting the change in the till, leafing through one of the balance books.

 _No, there’s nothing wrong,_ Yuuri would think. _There’s just nothing more._

How could he want to change the world, and his father couldn’t stand for anything to change at all?

Occasionally, he caught Viktor watching him and his father, and his eyes would narrow as if there was some kind of disconnect that he was trying to make sense of. Sometimes, Yuuri looked at his father, and his mother, and experienced a feeling of looking back in on himself, and he wondered the same.

‘You’re close with your dad?’ Yuuri had asked Hatsuyo. ‘Even so?’

‘Yes,’ she said. It sounded like she wanted to say more than ‘yes’. ‘Being away from Canada for so long… It can get really, really tough. He walked me onto the ice, you know?’ She wrapped her arms around her. ‘And you? With your parents?’

‘Are we close?’ Yuuri said. He had to pause. Close wasn’t—it wasn’t the right word. His father was content, sometimes, to live in a blissful ignorance, and his mother too frequently underestimated him. They didn’t expect as much from him as he often wished they would. But his parents, still, had been at the end of the phone when things had started to sink, unbearably, downward. They had been there when it mattered, and when he needed them.

But sometimes he could see when they grew bored with talk of skating, and he was so aware of the way his mother had teetered towards him the year before, after five years, and said, ‘Welcome home. I’m sorry I missed your graduation.’

 _Don’t you want to hug me?_ he had thought. _I’m your son._

‘We just—let each other go too soon,’ he’d said to Hatsuyo, eventually. She looked like she didn’t understand, and Yuuri wasn’t entirely sure that he did. But it was the best he could do to describe the feeling: a sense of drifting, his parents standing on the shore, waving as he rocked out into the ocean, them not knowing where Yuuri was going, Yuuri not knowing if he would be back.

Yuuri pulled himself back into the function room. To the interview, and the people sitting in front of him. The people sitting with him. His father might not want to change anything beyond the walls of the inn, clinging to the tradition of the _onsen_ and the _ryokan_ , but it did not mean that Yuuri had to follow in his footsteps. He had, after all, already made his way across the ice without him.

‘That’s a shame,’ Matthew was saying. ‘I’d hoped to suppress some of the growing rumours.’

‘What rumours?’ said Yuuri, and he hoped it was clear that he was disappointed. He’d wanted questions about the routine. He’d wanted questions that asked how he was finding skating with a partner, having a dependent. He’d wanted questions about _skating._

‘There is speculation,’ said Matthew, that word again, ‘that yours and Viktor’s sudden change to figure skating is… politically motivated.’

‘Politically motivated,’ said Sascha. She was incredulous. If Yuuri hadn’t known, he wouldn’t have even thought to doubt her. ‘If we wanted to make a statement, I’m not sure how you’re imagining we could do it by pair skating. Is there something we’ve done to flaunt the ISU regulations?’

‘No,’ Matthew conceded. He stared at them—all of them.

‘I think you’re going to have to ask a question,’ said Viktor, sweetly, ‘if you want an answer. Isn’t that generally how these things tend to go?’

Matthew paused. Yuuri could feel the weight settling in the room, a heavy, pressing thing that said this interview was more than simple interest. Something else was happening, the first stirrings of movement, the first quiet skitter of leaves across dry stone as air grew thick, and heavy, and a sky purpled with the promise of a storm. Something was coming, and Yuuri felt something soft brushing at the back of his neck, and he knew they were, all of them, going to have to brace.

Matthew said, unequivocally, ‘Is there an underlying personally, socially, or politically motivated reason for your joint debut into pair skating?’

 _This whole thing is personally motivated_ , Yuuri thought. _People skate for themselves, not for anyone else._ Except, sometimes, that wasn’t quite right, because Yuuri knew that he had skated for Viktor. And he knew that this—all of this—was for other people. They had changed the fundamentals of skating once, and they weren’t going to stop now.

It was Viktor who answered, eventually, and he wore a smile on his face that Yuuri had never seen before. It was sharp, and too lucid. This, Yuuri realised, was not another charade. This was him. _Diverting,_ he had said.

‘My dear Matthew,’ Viktor said. ‘You have _no_ idea.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **T/L:** _iubita mea_ is the equivalent of 'my beloved' or 'my love' in Romanian. I'd also like to point out Sascha's nickname for Hatsuyo, 'Hatsu'. Her name would use the hiragana 初(よ), and in this instance Hatsu means 'first' or 'beginning' in Japanese.
> 
>   
>  **Please click [Kudos ❤], comment, and/or share the fic with others if you enjoyed!**
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/) | Beta'd by the new and wonderful [Andrea](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Talk to me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com) | Beta'd by the beautiful [Andrea](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com)

# Viktor

A week before their debut performances at the International Challenge, the four of them flew to Helsinki to watch the Worlds. The airport and the hotels around the Hartwall Arena were teeming with lithe-looking athletes and often their less lithe-looking coaches. Lanyards and ID cards hung like dog tags around the necks of the press; cameras and microphones were stationed at every corner, and Viktor couldn’t blink for the flash of a bulb in his face.

The stadium was worse: the crowds were swarms of internationals desperate for a photo, and the reporters were eager for a comment. Since the interview, speculation had blown wild across sporting media, and it was a startling mix of scathing reports and articles glowing with adulation. Viktor would have found the whole fiasco amusing if, for once, it hadn’t involved him—and it hadn’t involved Yuuri.

Usually he stayed out of the tabloids and the mess of publicity. Yakov would scare most of them away with a look or a gruff warning, and Viktor would keep answers succinct and vague and refuse to comment on anything else. It made him into something that was strangely untouchable: his silver hair, his ice-white skin, his smile that had secrets and wasn’t willing to tell them. It made him into other things too, mostly something that was other, and not like the rest.

He couldn’t count himself among the men he stood between on the podiums; they were beside him, but he was not with them. He was beyond them in a way that could not quite be reached, and this did not always earn him kindness.

And now. What had he said to Matthew? Why had he goaded them? He—and the others—became something that was so close to being reached it was unbearable. He had brought them too close to revelation. He had put them in something like danger.

‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ Hatsuyo had said lowly, afterwards, as they unclipped their microphones and left the function room. ‘They’re like sharks. They’ll come at you as soon as they smell blood.’

It was Sascha who sighed as they headed over to the bar. Mari took one look at them and poured them a glass of _sake_ each.

‘It’s done,’ Sascha said. ‘There were rumours anyway. At least this will give them something credible to talk about.’

‘You wanted to make an impact,’ Viktor had said to Hatsuyo. ‘This will build the hype.’

‘The ISU won’t like it,’ Hatsuyo said. ‘I’m not having this ruined before we even get to the ice, Viktor.’

Yuuri, standing beside Viktor and rubbing his brow, had looked at her. ‘He hasn’t _ruined_ anything. This is nothing to go on. It’s poor journalism if we’re accused of flaunting the rules. There are no facts, and we’re the only ones that really know what’s going on.’

 _Except Phichit,_ Viktor thought quietly. But the Thai skater was as safe a confidante as Viktor knew. Viktor had never, until Yuuri, had someone he might feel like he could tell a secret too. The freedom of it now hit him with a kind of devastating truth.

Hatsuyo still looked concerned afterwards, and Viktor knew why: he was an uncontrollable variable in the whole transaction. She couldn’t afford to deal with someone who wanted to play with the media for the sheer hell of it. She couldn’t have someone who liked the risk—who wanted it to feel like some grand conquest of danger when it all paid off.

Because it couldn’t, definitely, pay off; the stakes were so high, and they all knew that this was walking on a tightrope without a net below to catch them. And even a net would be a gift of broken bones and bruised skin.

They found their seats in the stands when they arrived at the Hartwall Arena, and Viktor was distantly conscious of the way they were drawing eyes to them—the way phones were slipping out of pockets to steal a photo of them. He imagined they were probably something worth looking at—worth talking about.

‘It’s strange,’ said Yuuri, pressed close at Viktor’s side. ‘I’ve never really been a spectator before.’

‘It’s about perspective,’ said Sascha, peeling an orange into her lap. ‘You can watch yourself on camera a hundred times, or replay someone’s skate on TV, but it loses something.’ Her eyes met Viktor’s. ‘Except for you.’

‘Except for me?’ said Viktor.

‘When you skated, I felt the same thing watching you where I was.’

Viktor held her gaze a little longer, and then he looked out across the ice. He was used to the way Sascha handled truth: a brutal, unapologetic thing that didn’t care for the reception. He was used to, as well, the way she seemed to angle those truths at him like it wouldn’t bring something out of him.

‘Flattery won’t, so it happens, get you everywhere,’ Viktor said, eyes roaming the stands across from them, and the ice in front of them.

‘Viktor,’ said Yuuri, a mild warning.

Viktor shrugged. He didn’t care for her compliments. He knew precisely how he looked when he skated; he knew the reaction it built in Yuuri when he was watched. That was all that mattered.

An ice resurfacer was making its way across the rink, ridding it of the blade marks from the morning’s skates. He glanced at the clock; the first routine would begin in ten minutes, and the air was thrumming with anticipation.

The minutes slipped away, and the stands filled with spectators as the lights dimmed. Viktor glanced down as Yuuri’s palm slid into his, like the darkness could hide their joining.

‘You’re nervous?’ Viktor said, amused. Yuuri’s leg was bobbing up and down fast, shaking the floor beneath them.

‘I feel like I’m about to be called up,’ Yuuri muttered. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘It’s not,’ said Viktor. He could feel it too; the feeling in his throat, the way his body had tensed minutely in anticipation. It wasn’t nervousness—he’d never felt that before a competition—but there was something waiting in it. Something that called him. Willed him into movement. He wanted to be stepping onto the ice, to have the spectators eyes on him.

What was it going to be like, he wondered, to skate onto it with Sascha at his side? To have their attention split? To have them look at him, again, with total lack of awareness, and not know what he would do next?

He felt the promise of it settle in him, and his gaze was burning as he looked onto the ice, and the first skaters moved out.

 

* * *

 

They watched every routine from the free and short programmes. They were fast and sombre, near perfect and riddled with small mistakes. Hatsuyo and Sascha made comments throughout the routines—they knew what they were looking for where Viktor, sometimes, did not. He was still looking at the skaters as individual units; he did not see them as a combined medium.

Japan’s single entry was a retiring pair who were skating their last routine. Hatsuyo knew them well.

‘You can see it,’ she said. ‘They don’t have the power or the stamina anymore.’

Viktor could see it. A quad that became a triple; the slips in mirroring movements. When they finished, they were breathing heavily, and the female skater was leaning heavily on her partner. Viktor couldn’t help but feel a little grateful for it; if this was the precedent Hatsuyo and Yuuri had been set, they had already surpassed it.

Eventually, the pair for Russia came onto the ice, and Viktor knew when Sascha’s eyes fell on him.

Chenkov hadn’t changed. Still made of muscle and brawn and dark hair. He moved like something caged. His partner looked young and tiny beside him. Viktor forced himself to watch this. When the Russian Federation chose their candidates for the later competitions, they might choose Chenkov as well. Viktor felt his stomach roll. Their lifts and spins were bursts of barely contained power, but Viktor could see how he threw too hard, the girl struggling to keep balance as she landed.

Viktor remembered that kind of strength. He had been young, and slight, and it had been unbearable. That naïve, that young, Viktor had not known how to break away. He remembered a hand bruising at his throat. He remembered hearing the sound of a crack as he stood with his back against the wall outside the study room. He remembered, watching Chenkov’s dark movements, the scream.

They had cried for him, once, and Viktor had walked away.

 _I’m sorry,_ he’d thought, blindly, but had not stopped. _I’m so sorry._

Viktor gritted his teeth as Chenkov and his partner took a bow and made their way off the ice. They were replaced by a Swiss pair that Viktor didn’t recognise, who skated to Swan Lake.

‘Risky,’ Sascha murmured.

Yuuri was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, chin cupped in his palms, and Viktor reaching out to run his fingers through his hair had been an unconscious thing. Yuuri’s answer was a smile, but Viktor saw, too, what was lying beneath that look.

 _I can’t do that,_  he must have been thinking, watching as the pairs threw themselves into lifts, as they kept up a unity that rarely wavered.

But Viktor knew that Yuuri would think it because he simply didn’t see himself. He didn’t know what kind of thing it was to watch him on the ice—with Hatsuyo or not. He didn’t realise, too, that there was a year until Yuuri might be expected to hold the same standards. And that, in the end, it wouldn’t matter if he could. The ice would be Sascha’s and Hatsuyo’s.

The routines came to an end, and Viktor excused himself while the ice was resurfaced and prepared for the Men’s Final Short.

He knew the way to the skater’s zone, where Yuri would be waiting with Yakov and Lilia. Viktor could imagine his expression well—how blank it would be, and how focused. He wasn’t like Yuuri, who became something relentless and frenetic with nervous energy. But he wasn’t like Viktor, either, affable and calm, and knowing that skating was like breathing, only with more people watching.

He passed a security guard, flashing his lanyard, and made his way through the corridor towards the rooms given to the separate countries. It was teeming with skaters and coaches and medical professionals, and Viktor ignored the startled, wide-eyed looks they gave as he passed them.

He kept walking, rounding the corner towards the skater’s room for Russia, and stopped.

He hated that he stopped.

He hated, more, that when Chenkov lifted his eyes from the water fountain, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he smiled.

Viktor felt it cut through him, and felt it like something was leaving him—like he was being emptied and drained, and left a shadow or an outline. He had the strange, sudden desire that he would could walk away and corner and Mari would be there, a cigarette waiting in her hand, a lazy voice that said nothing really mattered.

Chenkov started moving towards him, and Viktor could only stand there, and let him get closer. Viktor wished that this could not matter.

 

* * *

 

# Yuuri

‘Viktor’s going to miss Yuri’s skate,’ said Sascha, glancing about as the seats started filling again for the Men’s Final.

‘He said he went to see Yuri,’ Yuuri told her.

‘But Yuri’s there,’ she said, and Yuuri’s gaze followed to where she was pointing. He could see the blond head, the young face looking out onto the ice from behind the perimeter fence. He was leaning on it with a frown and a set mouth as Yakov and Lilia spoke at his side.

The question lay between the three of them: _If Yuri is there,_ _then where is Viktor?_

‘I’ll go and find him,’ he said.

He followed the signs to the skater’s zone, slipping through windowless corridors that snaked around the back of the rink. He passed familiar faces and could barely offer them a smile as he moved through the athlete’s area of the stadium, feeling like he was in the belly of the beast. He stopped an official on his way, and was pointed in the direction of the room for the Russian skaters.

Maybe Viktor had been caught up by someone in the press? Maybe Mila, or someone else had drawn him away from the rink?

He rounded a corner, and felt relief flood him when he saw Viktor a little way up the corridor. He was speaking with a man in a red and white jacket for Russia, strongly built with dark, close-shaven hair. As Yuuri snaked his way through skaters and staff, he could make out the expression on Viktor’s face, and it made him stumble.

It was angry, except it was the kind of anger a child wore when they were trying to hide the stench of fear that swarmed around them. Yuuri knew that anyone else wouldn’t have noticed it; to anyone else, Viktor was calm, hands in his coat pockets, leaning back slightly on his heels. But Yuuri had been allowed to look on that face every day. He knew how Viktor looked when he slept, loose-limbed and soft-mouthed. He knew how he looked when he laughed, flushed and bright-eyed with surprised hilarity. He knew how he looked, when the air was heady and he lay ruined in the sheets, Yuuri’s hands pressed on his chest.

He knew what angered fear would look like, even if no one else did.

He walked faster.

When Viktor saw him, it was like being back in Hasetsu in December, when Sascha had stood in front of him in the inn. Like Viktor had gone somewhere, and only looking at Yuuri could start to bring him back.

 _Where have you gone, Viktor?_ he thought.

Sascha had told him, partly, the answer to that question. But he knew there were things missing.

‘Yuuri,’ Viktor said, and it came out strange, a sigh of pained relief. Yuuri pressed close against his side as he turned to look at the man he was speaking to. He was tall, and strongly built, eyes dark and hooded as he took Yuuri in. His gaze travelled from head to toe, leaving a strange feeling crawling across Yuuri’s skin, and then the man looked at Viktor.

‘This your little… _friend,_ huh?’ he said. His voice was deep and rough, accent even thicker than Sascha’s.

‘This is my partner, yes,’ Viktor said tightly. ‘Yuuri, this is Chenkov.’

‘I saw you on the ice,’ said Yuuri. ‘You gave a great performance.’

‘Performance?’ the man said, dark eyebrows drawn low. ‘Was not _performance._ Skating is not _show.'_

Yuuri paused. ‘I didn’t—’

‘He knows,’ said Viktor, quietly. ‘He’s being contrary.’

Yuuri watched as Chenkov’s face split into a grin, all teeth. ‘Contrary,’ he said. ‘You not like contrary, Vityok?’

‘There are a lot of things I don’t like, Chenkov.’

The grin, whatever tense, feral thing it had been, faded. Something was burning in his dark eyes, and when they swung back to Yuuri, he fought the desire to step back.

He had known people like Chenkov before: in Detroit, boys made of brawn and muscle and laughter that was as grating as it was loud. There was nothing about Chenkov that was boyish. Nothing that could be batted away by a loose hand. This would need a forfeit of bloodied knuckles to stop it biting.

‘I like your interview,’ Chenkov said, looking at Yuuri. ‘Was very… brave. I like it almost as much as kiss in Beijing.’

Chenkov’s use of the word ‘like’, Yuuri was coming to understand, was perhaps not the same way other people used it. Something, some dark current, ran too fast beneath it.

‘We weren’t providing entertainment for you, unfortunately,’ said Viktor, coolly. But something was running beneath his words too. He started to move away. ‘Not anymore. If you’ll excuse us—’

Chenkov’s hand moved before Yuuri could see it—before Viktor could move from it. But suddenly his fingers were knotted in Viktor’s hair, and Viktor’s neck was exposed at the sharp angle, head yanked back.

Yuuri was going to remember the sound that Viktor made, tight and choked. The way, for a moment, his blue eyes had flooded with sharp tears. Yuuri felt a shift in him.

Chenkov leaned in. ‘Little princess cut his hair,’ he murmured. ‘Not only thing that is different.’

Viktor was frighteningly silent.

Yuuri’s hand was trembling around Chenkov’s wrist, and the moment took on a different tone. ‘ _Get off him_ ,’ he ground out.

Chenkov looked at it like it was nothing, like Yuuri’s knuckles weren’t growing white with the pressure he was applying. Yuuri could feel the way Viktor had gone still, which was worse than anything else he could have done, and Yuuri said, ‘We’re in public. Now get off the fuck off him.’

Chenkov seemed to realise it then, the way movement had stuttered around them, the way eyes were being drawn to them. It would only take the press of a shutter.

‘Nervous about your reputation, Chenkov?’ Viktor murmured, voice quiet and vague. ‘Be smart.’

His hand loosened, and suddenly Yuuri was pulling Viktor back until they were out of reach.

‘I swear if you touch him again…’ said Yuuri. The warning was there, intent, but it shook too. He had never seen something like that before. No one touched Viktor like that. No one made Viktor into something that was less than everything he was.

Chenkov looked at Yuuri, lips quirking, eyes hooded. ‘You not know how to make threats, _pidaras._ Cannot make them with _me_.’

Yuuri knew that word. It was venomous. ‘You—’

‘Yuuri,’ said Viktor, pulling him away. Yuuri hated that he had to turn his back. That Chenkov could look at them and he could not stare back at him. ‘Come on. Yuri will be on soon.’

‘Ah, the little _kotenok_?’ Chenkov called after them as they walked away. ‘Give my love!’

Yuuri felt Viktor shiver slightly, felt him press closer against his side, and Yuuri felt himself making a silent promise to never let go.

 

* * *

 

They found Sascha and Hatsuyo eating a punnet of grapes in the stands. Viktor was silent, and Yuuri’s thoughts felt dark. It had always felt the other way around: Yuuri, the weaker one, Viktor the stronger. And it was not to say that Yuuri necessarily liked how it sometimes seemed, but, more, he did not like that Viktor seemed vulnerable. It made Yuuri feel not like himself; made him want to do things that were not himself.

They sat down beside the girls, shaking their heads when Hatsuyo held out the punnett, and Sascha seemed to notice then that something was different. That something, between them, was not quite right.

‘Are you all right?’ Sascha said, frowning. Yuuri knew what she was seeing: Viktor, eyes strangely intense in some kind of sudden shock, skin even paler than usual. He had somehow drawn into himself, been hollowed out, and Yuuri felt the unbearable desire of wanting, and not really knowing, how to bring him back.

‘Fine,’ Viktor said, blankly. His hair was slightly ruffled, and Yuuri didn’t know if he’d let him reach out to smooth it. ‘I ran into an… old friend.’

 _An old friend._ Yuuri realised, now, that Viktor had been right: he didn’t have friends before. So when he said someone was an old friend, he was not actually saying what everyone else was saying. The term carried with it something that was darker, and sly, and self-deprecating in a tortured kind of way.

‘The Russian pair skater,’ said Yuuri. ‘Chenkov.’

He watched Sascha’s eyes widen with some interest, and when they fell back onto Viktor, they carried with them something new.

‘Are you all right?’ she said again. The question was the same, but she was not asking the same thing anymore.

‘I said I’m fine,’ said Viktor, snappish. He seemed to take a deep breath, gathering some part of himself. ‘I thought—it would be different.’ He said this with the strange, distant tone of someone if, had they been smiling, would be whimsical. But Viktor was not smiling. It sent a chill through Yuuri. ‘Fifteen years.’

‘You didn’t see him at Sochi?’

‘I saw no one there more than necessary—more than I wanted to.’ Viktor’s eyes flashed. ‘I didn’t see you.’

Sascha opened her mouth, as if to give some uncertain retort, but a voice ran over the speakers, loud and booming.

_Please welcome the first competitor of the Men’s Short Programme, representing Russia, Yuri Plisetsky._

Sascha’s gaze did not leave Viktor, but in the end she had to turn back. She would get nothing from Viktor now; his gaze was on the ice. Yuri was about to perform.

 

* * *

 

‘He’s wearing leopard print,’ said Sascha.

Yuuri said, ‘Of course he is.’

The skate was a wild, prowling thing, a young cheetah making its way in a world where the grass was high and dry under an insufferable sun. Sharp, clean jumps, claws extended, a nervous energy that made it impossible to look away.

In moments he paused, went slow, slipped into low spins and brought himself close to the ice, every limb and muscle shifting into place. Readying himself. Eyes and mind locked onto something; teeth ready to wrap around its neck.

It was flawless; it was everything Yuri had made and wanted it to be. And yet Yuuri could watch it and only think about Viktor, and the skater—Chenkov. Another skater from Sambo? What more had happened when Viktor was fifteen that Yuuri hadn’t been told? What had Sascha chosen to leave out? When, if ever, would Viktor trust him enough to tell him?

 _It doesn’t matter,_ he would say. _It’s in the past._

But Yuuri didn’t think Viktor understood that he _wanted_ to know his past. He wanted to know everything—good and bad. He wanted to know it all. He wanted to know why Viktor was who he was; he wanted the childhood memories, the gaps between the TV appearances, the moments before and after the photographs that Viktor didn’t seem to have.

He thought, so often, about Viktor appearing at his door: suitcases full of clothing and skating books, and a dog. Where were the trinkets, the keepsakes? Where were the photo albums and the postcards and the scraps of things that people carted around to each new home—the things that, regardless of the place, made it a home. It had filled him with unbearable pleasure at the idea that Viktor had left Russia for him. Without question. Driven by some need—some desire to see Yuuri and be with him from a few minutes of soundless video. But what had he left behind? No, why had there been nothing to leave?

Yuuri was trying, desperately, to understand. Viktor was an enigma: on show, and accessible by anyone, and yet the most intensely private person Yuuri thought he had ever known.

There was a strange dichotomy between the person that Viktor let people see, and the person that he was, and Yuuri wondered when he would get to see more of the latter. When would Viktor realise that it _did_ matter—that living only ever in the moment left Yuuri wanting for something. Viktor lived in his home; spoke to his parents with stilted conversation; shared cigarettes with his sister. He had become a part of Yuuri’s life: seen his baby photos, and the evidence of his childhood skating obsession with him. He understood how Yuuri worked because of the things that had made him _him._

Yuuri knew Viktor as this sharp thing without filter—without care for anything else, really, but Yuuri and his dog. And Yuuri wanted to know why that was. Why had skating, a thing that was temporary, whose end Viktor had accepted when he was twenty-seven, become Viktor’s life in a way that seemed it would never end when they knew it would? What things filled the gaps?

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he could see that Yuri’s skate had finished, and Viktor was looking at him with a quiet, curious smile that barely touched his blue eyes. Yuuri smiled back, touched Viktor’s hand, and looked back out onto the rink, but his head was a storm.

He felt Viktor beside him, warm, real. He loved him. Was in love with him.

But still, he thought: _Who are you?_

 

* * *

 

Night descended on Helsinki with all the fanfare that a dark, cold March sky could muster.

When the competition ended for the day, Yuuri, Viktor, and Yuri made their way into the capital. They found a late-night coffee house in the Kallio neighbourhood of Helsinki, softly lit, jazz echoing through the speakers, vibrant, patterned wallpaper running around the walls. Bare light bulbs hung dim and low over the wooden tables.

They were the only customers, and the barista had her hip propped against the counter and a battered paperback in her hand. She barely looked at them.

Yuri, sitting in front of them, was still awash with the glow of the skate. He had placed second with his short programme, and tomorrow would compete for the free skate. A good score tomorrow could give him a win.

He had his hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, and occasionally Yuuri caught a giddy smile creep on his face before he fought to stifle it.

Viktor, beside him, was watching him with a glimmer of heart-breaking fondness that Yuuri didn’t think Yuri could see.

‘I’m not quite you,’ said Yuri. ‘But we can’t all be freaks.’

‘Freaks?’ said Viktor, quirking a brow. ‘I think the term you’re looking for is prodigy.’

‘No,’ said Yuri. ‘A prodigy is someone who’s good when they’re a kid, and then just ends up being average. You kept going.’

‘A compliment?’ said Viktor, leaning back slightly in his chair. ‘How generous.’

Yuri made a quiet _tsk_ sound. ‘And now you’re showing just how stupid you are,’ he said, looking between the two of them. ‘Pair skating. Seriously?’

Viktor shrugged. ‘It’s something new.’

 _‘Knitting_ would have been something new.’

Yuuri suppressed a smile. ‘No harm in trying,’ he said. ‘Or would you prefer us coming back to singles?’

‘No,’ said Yuri, slowly, narrowing his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t.’

Yuuri laughed a little. He knew what it had been like for Yuri during the Grand Prix Final: aware of his talent, and his skill, and having to face his limitations. And having to face that Yuuri had been one of them. At times, he had been all that stood in his way to a win, but Yuuri knew that wasn’t entirely true. Phichit, and Chris, and JJ—they’d all shone in their own blinding moments.

‘You’ve met our partners?’ Yuuri asked.

‘I knew Sascha already. I don’t know the Canadian.’

‘Hatsuyo,’ said Yuuri.

‘Whatever.’

Viktor sighed, and swallowed a mouthful of coffee. It had a shot of whiskey in that Yuuri could smell with a sting.

Yuuri was aware of the way the boy was watching them both—the way he had been since they’d met him in the hotel lobby, a little walk away from the café. It was a puzzled look, deep in concentration. Yuuri had seen him wear the same thing when Yuri had watched someone skate—someone who was better than him.

 _How does that work?_ the look said. _How is such a thing possible?_

‘I watched your interview,’ Yuri said, carefully. ‘In Japan.’

‘You shouldn’t have bothered,’ said Viktor. ‘The whole thing was pointless.’

‘Were they right? Was it—Are you doing it for something else?’

Yuuri glanced at Viktor, but his gaze was only on Yuri. ‘What do you think?’ Viktor said. It was the tone of voice Yuuri had heard him use often with Yuri. Casually curious, forceless. Not disinterested, as it might have come across, but pressing Yuri to come up with something.

 _Impress me,_ he said.

It was the same kind of voice he’d used a year before, telling them to skate their routines, and that the winner would win Viktor. It had been a strange victory, since Yuuri had known what kind of response it might spur in Yuri. He had felt, for a few days, like he had stolen something from him. But guilt slipped away into a deep, satisfied pleasure, and so he hadn’t felt it for too long.

‘I don’t know,’ said Yuri. ‘But I think they’re right. You never do things just because you want to. They’re always because of something.’

Yuuri wanted to tell him that that wasn’t entirely true. Viktor had come to Hasetsu because he wanted to—except, no, he hadn’t. He’d wanted to, but it was driven by too many other things: his own boredom, his desire to win in a way that wasn’t entirely his, his desire to make something out of Yuuri that he had seen and that, then, Yuuri hadn’t.

‘And if we said yes?’ Viktor said. His tone was still light, and loose, but there was a tension lingering behind them that Yuuri caught. He knew, maybe more than Viktor, how much Yuri meant to him. He knew that his opinion mattered. Yuuri knew that it mattered to himself too.

They were something like role models. They were something more. They wanted him to look at them and be as proud as they were of him. It must have been so easy for Viktor to see something of himself in Yuri, his sharp green eyes, his quick tongue, the way he held everyone to higher expectations than they could probably ever hope to achieve.

Yuri’s eyes were darting between them. The jazz playing through the speakers had turned low, and sad, and the barista was turning the pages of her book with a quiet _fwick_ of the paper under her fingers.

‘You’re not… You’re not going to do _that_ , are you?’

‘Do what?’

Yuri made a frustrated sound. ‘Stop playing games, Vitya. Stop—trying to test me. What have you done?’

‘What we are going to do,’ said Yuuri, quietly, ‘will probably get you in a lot of trouble if we told you.’

Yuri leaned back, and stared at them. ‘You’re going to throw everything away.’

Yuuri’s heart skipped. Wasn’t that exactly what he had been so scared of? Wasn’t that exactly the fear that Viktor had had?

He wanted to pull Viktor away, put his hands over his ears. _Don’t listen_ , he wanted to say, and more: _Please don’t change your mind._

But Viktor didn’t seem to care. ‘Only if we fail,’ he said.

‘You’re going to fail,’ said Yuri. ‘And then you’re going to be a _joke_ . And then no one will want to take your autograph, or your photo, or ask you to interviews, because you will be _ruined_.’

‘Yuri—’ Yuuri started.

Yuri’s gaze swung to him. ‘Was this you?’ he said. ‘Because he’d never do something this stupid. Is this your idea? It’s not like you’ve got much to lose compared to him.’

‘It wasn’t—’

‘You’re supposed to _love him.'_

Yuuri made a quiet, choked sound.

‘Yuri,’ said Viktor. He sounded sad. ‘You don’t know how much he loves me. You don’t know that it’s exactly because of that that we’re doing this.’

Yuuri sat still in his seat as his mind reeled. He was realising, now, that something fundamental had changed between them. He saw Chenkov’s hand pulling at Viktor’s hair. He heard Sascha’s imparting of knowledge that shouldn’t have been shared with him. This wasn’t about Viktor doing it for him, or because of some tabloid article. This was about Viktor doing it for himself.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ said Yuri. ‘That’s what I know.’

‘Then let us make it. One day you’ll—’

‘Understand?’ said Yuri. ‘Really. You’re going to give me _that_ line.’

‘There isn’t another way to say it,’ said Viktor.

‘How about not reminding me that I’m a child,’ said Yuri. ‘I’m going to win tomorrow. And I’ll be on your level then.’

‘And I was just as young and—and unaware at that age as you are.’

Yuri’s face screwed up. He pushed his mug away. ‘I’d always wanted to be like you,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I do anymore.’

Yuuri could feel his throat closing up. He couldn’t bear to look at Viktor, to see how still his expression would be. To see if, maybe, it would be fractured, and show it had exactly the effect on Yuuri to hear that it must been for Viktor to receive it.

‘You’ve changed,’ said Yuri. It was a distasteful accusation.

‘I have,’ said Viktor. ‘You think that’s a bad thing.’

‘You used to be ruthless and never care what anyone thought. I don’t understand why you have to prove something now.’

‘I could be cruel—can be cruel. And skating is proving something. It’s an exhibition. You know that, Yura. Every time you skate you’re trying to prove your worth.’

‘No,’ said Yuri. ‘The difference is that you never used to. You always seemed above it. That’s why we—That’s why we all looked up to you. That’s why we couldn’t reach you.’

‘I don’t want to be unreachable. It’s…’

 _Lonely,_ Yuuri thought.

He knew what it must have been like to begin with: it must have been thrilling to be above the protocols and the standards. It must have been such a feeling to know that you were different in a way that was new—different in a way that was better. People didn’t become legends by being like everyone else.

But Yuuri knew, too, that eventually the glow would become worn, become faded. That soon it settled itself into a wall that stopped others from looking in—and Viktor from looking out. Being impenetrable meant that taking the wall down brought with it bloodied nails and aching shoulders, straining with the effort.

He knew the relief he had felt when he met Viktor—a relief of being given something he hadn’t known he was waiting for. And he knew that, after a while, Viktor must have felt it too. Yuuri had been able to look in, and Viktor was letting him.

He remembered seeing Viktor at the airport after Russia. He remembered the unbroken strides—the unbroken gaze. He had felt, in his arms, something like being found.

_I don’t want to be unreachable._

It was becoming obvious now that the look Viktor gave him when he was slightly lost—with Sascha, with Chenkov, was that coldness. It was a distance that was used to being untouchable, and when it melted away it was the surprise of realising that someone had been able to reach him, a new dawning realisation that settled, like summer night warmth.

Yuuri was coming to realise how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Viktor. He knew this already, of course, but every day it felt like it was becoming cemented, and set. Every day he could see it fixed clearer and clearer.

He said, to Yuri, ‘The reason we’re doing this is because we love each other and because we’re not allowed to. Because our love isn’t normalised. Because stereotypes and skating expectations are telling us who we should be, and what we should be.’ He tilted his head. ‘You skated to _agape_ last year. Why is it that next year that wouldn’t be accepted anymore? Why is it that there are rules—gender norms, age expectations—that we have to follow? Isn’t skating supposed to be about expressing ourselves and being the truest version of ourselves? The realest identities that we have? Why should we accept the way things are set? Why should we not be able to change them if we can?’

Yuri, after, was silent. He couldn’t look at Yuuri, but Yuuri didn’t stop looking at him.

‘This is a risk,’ Yuri said, quietly. ‘Why bother changing something that won’t work?’

‘Because we don’t know if it won’t work, and it’s better than just doing nothing.’ He said, ‘I thought you wanted to be like Viktor. Don’t you want to try and shock someone for once?’

Yuuri caught the way Viktor’s lips quirked at the corners in mild, unexpected surprise.

Yuri was frowning into his mug, hands wrapped tight around the ceramic. ‘I just—don’t want you to be finished because of this. You’re both… more than that.’

‘We’ll be okay,’ said Viktor, softly. His hand slipped into Yuuri’s. It was so grounding. ‘Whatever happens, we’re together. We’re going to be okay.’

Yuri shook his head. ‘I still think you’re both _duraki_.’

Yuuri made a quiet sound. He put his head on Viktor’s shoulder. ‘We love you too, _baka_.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **T/L Notes:**  
>  _pidaras_ is a Russian homophobic slur.  
>  _kotenok_ means 'kitten' in Russian.  
>  _duraki_ and _baka_ mean 'idot' or 'fool' in Russian and Japanese, respectively.
> 
>   **Please click [Kudos ❤], comment, and/or share the fic with others if you enjoyed!**
> 
>  [Talk to me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com) | Beta'd by the beautiful [Andrea](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com)  
> 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight disclaimer: The end scene of this chapter was already planned before last week's episode, though I feel it has somewhat depreciated in value (not that I am complaining AT ALL). It changed only very slightly to fit the actual events. Which... wow, guys. Wow.
> 
> As usual: [Find/talk to me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/)

 

# Viktor

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘That’s easy for you to say.’

‘Because I know you’ll be fine.’

Yuuri wasn’t looking at him as he pulled the guards off his blades, a hand bunched in the fabric over Viktor’s shoulder for balance. Viktor could feel the tightness of that grip, and Viktor lay his palm on the back of Yuuri’s hand, thumb brushed over the bones that trembled beneath the touch.

Viktor let his eyes drift past Yuuri as he unzipped his jacket, watching Hatsuyo and Sascha. Sascha’s hands were flicking across Hatsuyo’s, like they didn’t know where to touch her: heavy on her shoulders, a thumb on the arch of her cheekbone, lips on her forehead, smoothing the dark hair back, a gaze demanding to be met. With her hair away from her face, the soft angles took on a shadowed intensity. Hatsuyo looked back at Sascha with eyes as dark and smooth as the pebbles Viktor found on Hasetsu’s shores. Unlike Yuuri, she was not scared.

Viktor knew it was easy to say that Yuuri would be fine.

He still felt the jerked breathlessness of a fast skate. He felt sweat cooling on his back. He could hear the judges scores, and see the wave of a crowd rising to its feet. He could see Sascha, an arm raised with his, and a look that was terrible.

She didn’t smile. Viktor had seen Sascha perform enough, even before he was partnered with her, that he knew what victory looked like on her face, and it was never a smiling thing. It was a sharp, hungry look that she let move around the arena. _I’ll devour you,_ it said. _And spit the bits back out from between my teeth._

Hatsuyo had something of the same look about her now, and Viktor wondered who had brought it first. Perhaps they fed off each other, and it grew very slightly, very quietly, until it was something dark and huge as legend, and a sword would not cut so easy through its hardened skin.

Viktor felt something tremble in him at the thought.

He and Sascha wouldn’t need to skate in August with their combined score; it was enough alone to get them to the Europeans. The other Russian pair—Chenkov was not competing—had slipped neatly below Sascha and Viktor’s score, but not close enough to surpass them.

‘For every time we’ve done it right,’ Yuuri was saying, ‘we’ve done it wrong five more times.’

‘It only took Edison one success out of a million failures.’

‘Yes,’ said Yuuri flatly, ‘but we’re not making light bulbs.’

‘You’re still making light.’

Yuuri’s eyes fell down at the corners at the same time as his mouth flicked up. He let out a quiet, inaudible groan.

Viktor grinned. ‘Was it that bad?’

Yuuri just shook his head. ‘How do you always make me feel so—’ His mouth worked around the right word, trying to find it. Eventually: ‘ _Capable_?’

‘Because you are,’ said Viktor, ducking his head to reach his gaze. ‘I’m just holding up a mirror to make you see it like I do. It’s always been so clear to me.’

Yuuri’s brows drew in, eyes fixed somewhere on the floor, seeing murky images in his head that Viktor couldn’t. ‘I get it now,’ Yuuri said. ‘Why you said you’d resign as my coach.’

Viktor’s heart hitched. ‘You should know I wish I hadn’t said it.’ Yuuri’s expression had made him shatter on the inside, stepping over the shards and making his feet bleed.

‘You thought I was being ridiculous,’ said Yuuri. ‘You already—already knew what I was like. What I could be like. You thought I was being melodramatic.’

‘I didn’t think you were seeking attention. I just… I didn’t understand it. You were phenomenal; I’d already seen that. And suddenly you were this fretful thing that didn’t believe in yourself. I couldn’t understand where the first part of you had gone.’

‘Lying in wait, I guess,’ Yuuri said.

Viktor took a step closer, and he felt the shift. Proximity prompting Yuuri’s eyes to swing upwards. The minute space between them feeling like the push of repelling magnets, keeping them apart, and Viktor wanted to thwart it.

His eyes followed the movement of Yuuri’s tongue across his lips, pink skin wet and glistening.

‘In wait for what?’ Viktor said, voice like a husk, scratching its way out of his throat.

Distantly, he was aware that they were standing on the sidelines of the rink, and that an official was going to be pulling Yuuri away any moment now. That they were in public. That being able to touch Yuuri was becoming a desire embedded in his skin, and that everything else was becoming… less.

‘You’re going to distract me,’ Yuuri murmured. Viktor’s eyes tracked the slide of Yuuri’s throat as he swallowed.

‘Like you don’t want me to.’

‘I—’

‘ _Katsuki Yuuri and Ito Hatsuyo, please make your way to the entrance gate._ ’

The voice echoed around them, pushing them into silence, and Viktor saw the truth of it—the reality of it—settling in Yuuri’s gaze.

‘You have two chances,’ said Viktor, feeling himself shift, knowing that the words needed to be real too. He wanted to kiss him. He had to make Yuuri believe he could win. ‘You’ve already got a good score for your short. Just imagine you’re at Ice Castle. Or in Minako’s studio. And the only people there are the four of us.’

‘I should probably stop pretending I’m somewhere else,’ Yuuri murmured. ‘Face the music.’

‘You don’t have to,’ said Viktor, and after a pause he confided in him: ‘I imagine Sascha is you most of the time.’

Yuuri’s eyes flashed across Viktor’s face in that darting way of his, consuming everything he saw in the blink of an eye, swallowing it in the space of breath, before Viktor could realise he had been taken in by it. It left him feeling slightly winded, like a silent storm had ravaged its way through him under the cover of night, and left a destruction that felt like being kissed—felt like something more.

‘I don’t think I can imagine Hatsuyo is you,’ he said eventually.

The voice called out again over the tannoy, and Viktor saw Hatsuyo starting to make her way over, strides long and certain. She was wearing that _look_.

‘Wish me luck,’ said Yuuri, and when Viktor glanced back at him he was wearing a version of the look too. Weaker, less certain, but built of that same heavy desire that went beyond putting blades on the ice and bowing for a crowd.

Viktor wished he felt it like they did, but he knew that, also, he didn’t. It seemed like something that would eat him alive. It suited Yuuri, a quiet, contained cyclone that didn’t know it was spinning. Viktor would know it too fully. He couldn’t deny that he’d hurt someone.

‘Good luck,’ said Viktor, since it was all he could say to someone who didn’t need it, and he watched Yuuri head onto the ice.

* * *

He knew when it happened.

Sascha apparently knew too, a drawn in breath like the whistle of cold winter wind in Moscow.

The routine was a spectacle that let itself unfurl as the seconds slipped by. It was a snow storm, harsh and hard and unrelenting, except when you looked close enough—if you looked close enough—you might see the patterns of the flakes, intricate as lacework, brutully symmetrical in a way that didn’t seem real, and yet was, because it was nature, and nature didn’t lie.

The routing was not a lie, and if you knew what to look for, you might get a glimpse of the truth.

‘Viktor Nikiforov,’ the commentator was saying in his ear, English lilted by an Italian accent. ‘Now there’s a gift that keeps on giving.’

‘You think you know him,’ said another. ‘He makes you think you know what to expect, and then he shatters it. I think he’s the kind of skater you can only sit back and watch. You’ll drive yourself mad with that kind of guessing game.’

Viktor pulled the earphones from his ears in frustration. He wanted to tell them that they were wrong. How could they be watching Yuuri’s performance and be saying that about Viktor? Couldn’t they see the irony? That the thing that had and did surprise them all, ceaseless as an avalanche, was not him, but Yuuri?

It was incidental that, for most of the skate, he watched Sascha, because looking at Sascha was like seeing what he was feeling, splayed out raw and unbearably honest.

 _Look at her,_ he wanted to say, to the cameras that kept slipping away from Yuuri and Hatsuyo and moving to their faces in the stands. _This is what it’s like. See that lift of her eyes? See the white press of her lips? See her hands shuddering like breaking machines in their fists? That is how I look on the inside._

And it was watching her, and not watching Yuuri and Hatsuyo because they were almost too much to see like this, that meant he knew when it happened.

It was the twist lift in the end. The same one, in the studio, they had hammered out like heated metal until it lay pressed in the shape they wanted. Maybe they hadn’t smoothed out the impressions from the mallet. Maybe they had beaten it too much.

It happened too fast: Yuuri’s bent knees, Hatsuyo curling in the air, an ankle giving way beneath her. Her hands caught on the lapels of Yuuri’s jacket, and even grip tight on her waist as she landed could not stop her from pulling him down in a dead weight even as they skated.

Yuuri’s head hit the ice first. The music was playing, but the stands were silent. For a moment, nothing happened, and Viktor felt everything giving way beneath him, like gravity had decided to turn off for a moment. But Yuuri was breathing, and blinking, and Hatsuyo was making her way to her feet, and they were skating like it hadn’t happened. Down and up. One grade execution level. Two points from the TES.

It was nothing. Really, it was nothing. But Viktor knew that this wasn’t true—a fall ruined the flow of a skate, it injured the skaters, it shattered the glow of confidence that they needed. Yuuri would take the blow, and Viktor didn’t think Hatsuyo was qualified to help take the brunt of it, too.

Viktor didn’t look at Sascha now. He didn’t want to see the proof of how he felt, so neatly, so tragically splayed and exhibited in her features.

‘Fuck,’ he heard her say.

If Viktor could allow himself to breathe, he would have said the same.

‘You have August. More than five months.’

‘We have August, but we had _this_ , and we’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined it.’

Sascha’s face fell. ‘It’s not your fault, Hatsu. It happens.’  

Viktor stood still and quiet as Hatsuyo paced the length of the kiss and cry, empty now that the cameras and the press had moved away, waiting for the next pair to come off the ice. He stood with his arms wrapped around Yuuri, and Yuuri was as still and unyielding as stone in his arms.

‘Maybe we need a coach,’ said Hatsuyo.

Sascha rubbed a hand across her forehead. ‘I think we’re all experienced enough. Your ankle buckled on a land. It was a hitch. Hatsu, it _happens_. I know you’ve got funds, but there’s no point throwing money at someone to fix it.’

Viktor tuned them out. He could still see Yuuri’s expression as he stepped off the ice, and the space behind Viktor’s ribs ached with the fierceness of it, the lack of apology in it, the hapless grin. And it ached even further when, hidden in the bathroom, Yuuri had tucked his face against Viktor’s neck and let out a cry.

‘I’m just _angry_ ,’ he’d said, words muffled into the slope of Viktor’s neck, and mottled with the mix of frustration and upset. Viktor had never felt it, but it came strongly enough from Yuuri that he could smell the acrid char of it, and taste it on his tongue like burning embers. ‘I’m just—I’m _angry_.’

‘You’re allowed to be,’ said Viktor.

‘ _I know_.’

Yuuri stepped away, backwards, until his hands were gripping the sink, and Viktor didn’t try to move forward. The space between them was set by Yuuri, and Viktor didn’t try to fill it. He watched him gather his thoughts, Yuuri’s mouth twitching as he fought back the desire to give into the upset more than the anger, brows drawn heavy and low.

‘I’m not sure I should be doing this.’

‘Yuuri, you can’t—’

‘I’m being realistic,’ said Yuuri, cutting him off. ‘Maybe we should have waited another year. Maybe they should have asked someone else. I’m not like you, Viktor. I can’t adapt to things.’

Viktor broke the rule he had set himself, and moved forward, neck bowed, breath brushing the side of Yuuri’s face. Yuuri let him in. ‘Hatsuyo was the one who fell, Yuuri. Not you. She’s the pair skater, and she got it wrong.’

‘And maybe the problem is her partner.’

Viktor shook his head. ‘Stop trying to take the blame to make it easier. To make things accountable to one thing so it’s easier to understand.’

‘I’m not—’

‘You are. It’s what you do.’

He knew that half of this was because Viktor and Sascha were through. Because it was a reflection so clearly of their training sessions that didn’t matter, being brought into a scenario where, suddenly, it did. It mattered a lot. But the other half was a multi-faceted thing. Yuuri’s tendency of quiet self-blame; his wanting to accept something as his fault so no one else had to. It was possible to be too selfless sometimes, until it became almost selfish.

‘You’re not giving up now,’ said Viktor simply. ‘I won’t let you. Sascha and Hatsuyo won’t let you.’

It was the second one that seemed to reach him, the image of the girls listening to his submission of defeat, and refusing to accept it with nothing short of outrage. It would hit Yuuri that he had not let them down, but in doing so, then, he would have.

‘Does it even matter?’ said Yuuri. ‘So long as one of us gets to the Worlds. Does it even matter that we both get through?’

‘You know it does.’

‘Not _really_.’

‘It matters,’ Viktor had said, ‘in the way that most things that don’t seem important matter. We’re not doing this without you. Would you carry on if Sascha and I missed out on the Europeans?’

‘Of course not.’

Viktor’s raised eyebrow met Yuuri’s flush squarely. Sometimes it took this to make him see—circumvention and careful conversation, manoeuvring Yuuri like a chess piece across a board until he realised that he was standing in check mate.

Viktor, holding up a mirror to him again, until he understood that the reflection was his own.

He’d held Yuuri’s wrist between his fingers, bones fine and soft, the workings of a bruise yellowing the flesh from the fall, and had lifted it to his mouth, the ring against his lips.

‘The training wouldn’t have stopped,’ said Viktor, murmuring truth and honesty against Yuuri’s skin. Yuuri’s cheeks flared with the intimacy of it. Shocked more, sometimes, by these quieter moments than anything else. ‘There’s just another hurdle. And when August comes you’ll be more perfect than you already are.’

‘That’s impossible,’ said Yuuri, eyes flashing away, the closeness colouring his voice. ‘No one can be _more perfect._ ’

His eyes fell back, the magnets turned around now, pulling them towards each other, and Yuuri’s look was shy and uncertain and hopeful, which was exactly everything he already was: living through the moments that went wrong, and still hoping for the best.

Viktor let his gaze sweep across him, and looking at him sometimes was enough to taste the salt of his skin, the tremble of his flesh like a bird loosening its feathers.

‘Until I met you,’ said Viktor. ‘I used to think the same.’

* * *

Viktor knew what it was like to want something so much you ached for it, until sleep and eating and breathing became obligatory, second-rate necessities, and you wished you could replace them with the thing that you wanted instead. It would make it easier to stay alive.

He knew what it was like to want something so much you ached for it, and not be able to have it. Every grasping hand closing around empty air, every step into it too short. _Nightmare real_ , Viktor called it. Because you could close your fist around it in a dream, but wake up with an empty palm, and a realisation that not all things were so tangible, or so possible.

‘He’s going to hurt himself,’ Sascha said, chin cupped in her palm, eyes watching as Yuuri threw himself into another Axel.

He had stamina—they all knew how long he could work for before they tired—but even this was too much.

‘You’re not going to stop him?’ Sascha asked. Her tone was only lightly curious, and free of accusation.

There was a pause before Viktor spoke, as Yuuri’s skate hit the ice with a quiet crack like chalk snapping. ‘No,’ said Viktor. ‘He knows his limits. And if he doesn’t, then he’ll come to know them.’

‘By breaking an ankle? Ripping a ligament?’

‘Don’t be dramatic.’

‘Only looking out for your nearest and dearest, Vitya.’

Viktor rolled his eyes. ‘Of course, Sanda. That’s your forte, isn’t it? Protecting the general welfare of other people.’

She shrugged off the jibe, and the name. They were used to this now, and it had devolved into something petty and impulsive, drawn to it because it was what they knew. The comment lack the fire, too. He had seen how she was with Hatsuyo, and the kind of person that she became. He hadn’t accepted that it was the person she had always been.

‘One day you’ll be surprised by how little you actually know about me.’

Viktor didn’t look at her as he said, amused, ‘Oh, I look forward to it.’

They watched Yuuri skate for a while in silence, the conversation light enough that it was forgotten between them in a few moments, inched further and further away as Yuuri moved faster across the ice, feet slipping over themselves as he went backwards, moved himself into light spins and heavier jumps.

Watching him still made something sit heavy in the base of Viktor’s throat. He felt like if he brushed his fingers against his collarbones, or his sternum, he might catch the trailing threads of it.

It was strange watching a routine that, for so long, had been with Hatsuyo at his side, but she had gone to see her father for a week while he visited Switzerland, and Sascha had stayed in Hasetsu.

‘He’s almost better,’ Sascha said. ‘When he’s not with her.’

‘He’s a single skater,’ said Viktor. ‘Of course he’s better.’

There was nothing of the stuttered hesitancy about Yuuri’s skating when he skated alone. Nothing on him like a rope around his waist, pulling him back with small tugs. Viktor could see that this was good for him; he had the confidence of his own convictions. He knew, innately, and intimately, that he was capable.

Viktor smiled to himself at the word. Of all the things he made Yuuri feel, and it was capable.

He supposed there were worst things to enable someone to be.

Eventually, Yuuri’s movements slowed. The tiredness clung to him like it was corporeal, a shroud of heavy material that lay thick across his shoulders, and in the small of his back, and the curve of his neck. Yuuri’s hand brushed across each of them like marks lit up across his skin that he could brush away and dim with a touch.

‘Limits,’ said Viktor, helpfully, to Sascha.

* * *

Routine had returned easily by April. Hasetsu’s grounds were boasting green shoots and crowds of peonies, and the sakura trees were quivering with the pink weight of their blossom. Spring brought with it milder weather, softening the sharpness of the sea breezes that wound their way through the town, and it brought with it Phichit.

Hatsuyo would be returning the next day, and neither Viktor nor Sascha protested when Yuuri and Phichit went into Saga for a night.

The inn was busier than usual, tourists flocking to the coastal town for its hot springs and to see the sakura, and there was a pleasant hum of music and drinks clicking that made Viktor forget that Yuuri had gone, and that he was not with him. Almost forget.

‘Despondent.’

Viktor looked at Minako, clicking her fingers, index finger pointed at him with a thoughtful look. Her cheeks were flushed.

‘Excuse me?’

She slid into the seat beside him. ‘Despondent. That’s the word, isn’t it? A lover left all on their own, wondering what their partner might be doing in a big bad city full of big bad people? All those sordid pleasures.’

Viktor smiled tightly behind the rim of his cup. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed, Minako? Children to teach in the morning.’

‘Oh, definitely,’ she said. The seriousness might have been convincing if she hadn’t stuck the neck of a beer bottle in her mouth and swallowed down half of it with startling efficiency. There was something almost militarial about it. ‘I had a lover once,’ she said, leaning close and conspiratorial. Her breath was sticky and heated as it washed over him. ‘Only we didn’t see each other much. I was in Russia, they were in Australia. I was in Canada, they were in London. You see?’

‘Somewhat.’

‘We never—we didn’t yearn for the closeness. I liked that they might be here when I got back, and I didn’t mind too much if they weren’t.’ Her eyes flittered to Viktor’s knuckles. ‘We weren’t like _that_ , you see?’

Viktor watched her patiently. ‘Do you wish you were like that?’

She put the bottle back in her mouth, the glass clicking against her teeth, but she didn’t drink. After a moment, she pulled it back out, thoughts an interruption.

‘I’d have to give up ballet to have made it work.’

‘Yes,’ said Viktor. ‘But do you wish you were like that?’

Her eyes were dark and the pupils were heavy, widening like spilled oil, but it was a lucid look. She reminded him of Mari. She reminded him of Sascha. The way they could still; the way a thought could arrest them; once prompted, drawn into themselves. An inwardness where memory and words existed. Viktor thought he knew what that was like.

Minako ducked her head, a curtain of dark hair falling around her face. ‘Sometimes I want it more than anything,’ she said, in the voice of someone who was telling a secret for the first time. ‘Sometimes I don’t want it at all. What if it hadn’t worked out? What if they grew bored? What if what if what if.’

‘Those sound like sensible questions.’

Her face took on a lost quality as she lifted her head again, and drank the rest of her beer, throat working slow as her eyes settled somewhere above the bar. ‘Don’t they? I thought so, too.’

She didn’t say anything else, just nodded her thanks to Mari at the other end of the bar, and made staggered movements to the door where Viktor knew Mari would have booked a taxi. Viktor turned back, and looked at the bottle she’d left behind, lipstick-stained.

It was strange that among the largest groups of people, it was possible to indulge in the most intimate thoughts. It was like, surrounded by other people, your inner voice became louder. Took on something secretive when the risk of someone hearing you—though they never could—was somehow greater.

With Yuuri, it was different. With Yuuri, every thought became about him. Viktor’s blood felt like it was singing for him, body like it was moving to him and for him. The private thoughts were overwhelmed by him and the moments of self-doubt, of a lost confidence, bittersweet in the dips, risen again by way of Yuuri’s gaze, or his lips, or—by Yuuri, simply.

But now, he looked at the grey-haired men playing _shogi_ , the pieces sticky with spilled beer, at the table of women he knew worked for the web design company in town, coming to the inn to get away from their jobs and talking about nothing but. He looked at the man reading a book, son’s head in his lap, asleep. He couldn’t have been more than five. Viktor’s heart ached.

He looked at them and wondered what they thought about. Were they preoccupied in the same, maddening way Viktor was about Yuuri? Was he the first, entirely arrogantly, to have felt something like this? He wondered if they looked at Yuuri and thought what he did. His mind halted the trajectory, and he wondered if they looked at Sascha and thought what he did. He felt the envy of hoping they didn’t at the former, and yet wanting them to all the same. _Look at what I love._ He felt the dark pleasure of hoping they did at the latter. _Look at what I think I hate._

Being among people also meant you were never alone with your thoughts for long, and he swallowed a mouthful of wine when he caught Sascha’s pale head making its way through the low tea tables, and stared at her as she took the seat Minako had just vacated. The beer bottle hadn’t been cleared away, and Viktor watched her looking at it.

‘You just missed Minako.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I was waiting for her to leave.’

Viktor raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought you liked her.’

‘I do,’ said Sascha, shrugging. ‘I didn’t want to talk to her, though. I want to talk to you.’

The cup paused halfway to his mouth. ‘Really,’ he said. He wasn’t sure this was within the boundaries of their allowed conversation. He wasn’t sure how he felt that she was breaking it so blatantly.

Something about sitting beside someone in a bar must have encouraged a truth that otherwise lay hidden. Maybe they thought that without Yuuri, while he was with Phichit, he was eager to listen.

He imagined Yuuri, sitting on his other side, pressing a laugh into the back of his hand as Viktor stuttered through conversation that he felt overwhelmingly unqualified to handle. The lightness of it felt strange, and if it had been anyone else, he might have appreciated the gesture, but this was Sascha.

‘Buy me a drink,’ said Sascha.

He gave her a dry look. ‘What, for old time’s sake?’

‘We never—’ She broke off, and Viktor knew what she was seeing: empty bottles and feet swinging over rooftops. Her face settled into something that he couldn’t understand. ‘You shouldn’t have let me drink. I was stupid when I drank.’

‘You brought the bottles,’ said Viktor. ‘It was your own fault.’

‘Chenkov sold them to me from the liquor store around the corner of Sambo. He made a profit.’

Viktor bit the inside of his cheek and looked away. ‘Of course he did.’

Mari chose that moment to come over. She poured more _shoju_ into Viktor’s cup, and brought a new one for Sascha. The heavy-lidded look she passed between the two of them was too slow to be pointed, but the meaning was there.

_Don’t scare the locals if you two start shouting at each other in Russian._

Sascha swallowed a mouthful, winced, and her voice was rough as an uncut stone as she said, ‘What did Chenkov say? In Finland.’

‘What do you think he said? He was as fucking ineloquent as usual.’

‘Does Yuuri know? About him? About—’

‘Don’t say his name. Don’t you dare.’ A moment ticked past. Viktor clenched his jaw, made his face impassive again with a pull of muscles and a self-command that was like pulling a set of shutters closed with a hard slam. He let himself take a low breath, the _shoju_ burning cold and sharp through his lungs.

‘Still?’ said Sascha. ‘You can’t blame yourself for what happened.’

His smile was razor thin. ‘I don’t. I blame you.’

‘I think that’s a lie. I think you want to blame me, but you can’t. You’re the one who closed yourself off for nearly fifteen years after. You didn’t speak to anyone from Sambo. You barely spoke to the rest of the team at competitions.’

‘You don’t wonder why?’

‘I know why. It reeks of self-hatred, Viktor. Of bitterness. For something you didn’t even do.’

Viktor’s hand tightened around the cup. ‘I think it’s funny,’ he said, ‘that you want me to tell Yuuri what you’ve already told him.’

He caught Sascha’s breath hitching, the conversation switched and flipped on its head like a coin. He’d been through enough interviews; he knew how to talk about something he wanted to. More, he knew how to talk about something they didn’t want him to.

‘Yes, I told him,’ Sascha said, voice steady. ‘But all I told him was what I did. With your parents. That was it.’

‘It?’ said Viktor. ‘You had no right. You had no right to out me to my parents. You had no right to out him. You had no right to tell Yuuri.’ He scoffed, derisory enough that he caught it when she flinched. ‘ _It._ ’

‘And yet you’re only bringing it up now,’ she said. Her shoulders were twisted towards him, imploring, but he kept himself facing forward. If he looked at her too much he might believe her. ‘You don’t care that much, Viktor. Or—no. You care, but you care too much to be able to tell anyone else. It’s easier that I did it, isn’t it?’

‘Of course,’ said Viktor. ‘It’s always easier to tell people things that have nothing to do with you.’

 _‘God_ , you’re infuriating.’

Infuriating? He was angry. Angry at her; angry that he couldn’t stop being angry at her. The flat eyes and the thin smile didn’t work so well here. She wasn’t Yuri, young and not yet learned; she wasn’t a reporter. That smile had come about because of her—because of it all; she knew what he looked like beneath it. But he wasn’t going to get caught on camera with his anger. And if he did, what, exactly, did it matter? Let them know he was angry. The moment the newspaper touched Yuuri, he had wondered perhaps if anger that was quiet as a still sea didn’t work quite so well anymore.

He said, ‘And you’re expecting this to be easy.’ He knew it was selfish, and un-Christian, holding onto grudges like this, but every so often he would dream about it, a crushed leg, a torn-out scream, Sascha’s face young and pale as a moon. How did one forgive something that they couldn’t forget, even if they wanted to?

He’d gone so many years dreaming about it, and not thinking about it but in the short waking moments, night-sweat washed away by the spray of a shower with everything else his mind had brought him while he slept, and now he could not stop thinking about it in the day.

He had wanted to skate, and to be with Yuuri. Nothing else. And now there were the _didn’t-wants._ They made things harder.

‘Have you spoken to him?’

Viktor didn’t need to ask who she was talking about. He wanted to tell her to shut up, but he wasn’t sure she would. He was conscious that they were the only two in Hasetsu—no Hatsuyo, no Yuuri. It felt like they had displaced them somehow. ‘What do you think?’

‘I thought you might have… I don’t know. Reached out. Seen how he was doing.’

‘Seeing that his last words were that I did that to him, he probably wouldn’t appreciate the gesture.’

Sascha’s silence was heavier when they were in a room that was loud.

‘He said that?’ she said at last. She sounded like something was finally making sense, a hand wiped across a steamed-up window, a road clear at last.

‘No, I made it up.’

She ignored that. ‘He shouldn’t have said that. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t _true._ ’

‘Yes, well. If he couldn’t hate Chenkov without repercussion, then at least I was conveniently there.’ Viktor rubbed a hand across his jawline. ‘I think he said it because I was leaving. Because it felt like I was leaving him there.’

‘He left the day after you. I remember his parents coming. What could you have even done for him? It wasn’t like he was going to skate again.’

 _Something. Anything._ ‘I walked away from him, Sascha. That’s what I _did_ for him. I left him because skating meant more to me.’

‘You were scared and had a career in front of you. Look where you are.’

‘Yes,’ said Viktor. Yuri’s words fitted neatly into his mouth. ‘Throwing it all away.’ He slid his gaze slowly onto her. ‘For you.’

Sascha’s expression was still, grey eyes barely wavering. Outside of their conversation, everything felt muted. It was like they had thrown a sheet over themselves, thirteen and talking by shared torch light, and that no one could really see in.

‘That’s why you didn’t want to do this,’ said Sascha, revelatory. ‘Because if you failed, it was like you’d failed him.’

‘He didn’t mean that much to me.’ Not compared to Yuuri, whose love he felt like being given a star to hold in cupped palms. Love, then, had not been love. It was mundane affection like a patch of warm sunlight on dry grass, frightfully pale in comparison. Love like that was supposed to be a harmless thing, and Viktor was still trying to decide what had gone wrong.

‘But the concept did,’ said Sascha. ‘The morality of it bothered you. If you failed, it wasn’t because it would reflect badly on _you_ , it was because it would somehow forsake everything you had—or hadn’t done to him.’

Viktor didn’t reply, and he knew that it meant that he was saying yes. Not entirely. But mostly. Yes.

He drank another mouthful of wine, and by now he could feel the warm thrill of it running beneath his skin, the inward heat that joined muscle to bone, and turned blinking into something slower and something to think about—to consider. It made the natural unnatural; it made him forget about what he was supposed to do and say and be. The coin, flipping again, only this time he didn’t know where it would land.

‘Did you still get your vodka from Chenkov after?’

She tilted her head at him. ‘After?’

‘When I left. You said you didn’t like him but I always knew you did.’

‘I stuck my dinner knife in his leg and got expelled,’ Sascha said. ‘He couldn’t skate for two weeks. I missed everything important. It’s why I went to Dynamo.’

Viktor stared at her. She wasn’t even looking at him. The bar lights were a soft splay of orange on her face. ‘I—didn’t know that.’

Sascha shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t reply to my letters. How would you?’ After a moment of silence she stood from the stool, and pulled a few notes from her jacket pocket, pressing them crinkled onto the bar. ‘It was probably selfish. Doing it for me again. But I really thought I was doing it for you that time.’

He felt her hand on his shoulder, awkward and tentative, and it didn’t stay there long. He thought about the bizarre possibility of asking her to stay. Another drink. In another life, if they were in Russia, if they were friends, that’s how it might have been. She might have said yes. But the words didn’t pass from mind to throat, so instead he felt the tightness of an unspoken question, and the relief of having not said them.

He made an effort not to watch her go.

* * *

When he went up to his room, the bar downstairs had quietened, and emptied. He spoke to Mari for a while, about their skating practice, about the commercial success of the inn, and he appreciated her attempts at neutrality. They spoke in Japanese, since Viktor wasn’t fluent but it wouldn’t take long, and he would have pretended not to understand if she had broached the topic of Sascha.

_How do you say ‘I might have made a mistake’ in Japanese?_

The bedroom was warm, and there was a lingering _Yuuri-ness_ about the room, and Viktor pressed his face close into Yuuri’s pillow. It smelled of vanilla shampoo and warm cotton and something that Viktor had always tasted in his smile.

Viktor pulled his clothes off and left them in a pile at the foot of the bed, crawling beneath sheets that were soft and undeniably empty. His hand felt the dip in the mattress, and it was not easy to imagine him there when he wasn’t. He wished he could dream him up—summon him somehow. He wished that when he closed his eyes he would see him, smile and glasses and heavy dark eyes that saw something in Viktor worth seeing.

He knew he wouldn’t. His conversation with Sascha lingered in the back of his mind too fully to even be called lingering. It was lying in wait, waiting for the nostalgia for Yuuri to subside, in the moments before sleeping and wakefulness, to pounce.

He thought about going downstairs, and drinking another half a bottle. Maybe then he wouldn’t dream at all.

He was halfway to subconsciousness when his phone rang. For a while, he thought he had slipped into sleep already, but the sound was insistent, and seemed to be growing louder, and when he squinted into the darkness, his mobile was lit up on the side-table.

He reached for it with a heavy hand, and pulled himself up.

_YUURI._

His heart flickered lightly in his chest. He swallowed the feeling down in his throat.

‘Hello? It’s—’

 _‘Viktor_! Viktor! It’s _Phichit_!’

Viktor blinked, pulled the phone away to look at the caller-ID, and then nestled it back against his ear. ‘Phichit,’ he said.

‘Yes, it’s me! I’m with Yuuri! We’re in Saga!’

Viktor closed his eyes for a moment as the very drunk, very loud sounds of Phichit stopped echoing in his eardrums. ‘I know.’

‘I’m very very very drunk, Viktor.’

‘I know that too.’

‘And I wanted you to know that Yuuri very very very much is in love with you.’

Viktor swallowed, again. ‘I know that too.’

He heard the sounds of fumbling, a phone being passed from hand to hand, short laughter. Someone was breathing heavily into the phone. ‘Viktor?’ they whispered.

‘Hello, Yuuri.’

Warmth burst in his chest. He could hear Yuuri smiling. Eyes closed, he could imagine the giddy look on his face, cheeks flushed, eyes glistening. _Don’t lose your glasses,_ he wanted to tell him.

‘Do you miss me, Viktor?’

Viktor drew a knee up to his chest, and he rested his chin on it. A smile, amused, was brushing itself onto his lips. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘I hope you’re sure,’ said Viktor. ‘I miss you a lot.’

_What if what if what if. Sensible._

‘Viktor?’

‘Yes, Yuuri.’

‘I can’t wait to be married to you.’

Now the warmth was almost unbearable, but Viktor made himself weather it. _I haven’t proposed yet_ , he almost said, but he heard the cruelty in it as an afterthought, and he knew that it would have been a lie. Rings slipped onto fingers, standing in the shadowed alcoves of a cathedral. Yuuri’s face had been half-split by light and dark.

Viktor had not slept that night, his heart jack-hammering in his chest like a caged bird. Turning on his side, bed pressed against Yuuri’s, a pair of dark eyes stared back, bright and awake. Perhaps he had been watching for some time.

They had looked at one another, breathed the same air-conditioned, hotel air. Viktor remembered a lesson he had been taught in Physics, how everyone shared some atoms with everything that had ever existed, and how people were made of the same thing as stars. It had awed him, but not as much, then, as realising that Yuuri was made of the same thing as Viktor, and Viktor was made of the same thing as Yuuri. Barcelona’s lights crept through the curtains. Viktor could not help but look at him. With every glance, he had been pulled back.

‘I didn’t know,’ Yuuri had said, cheek pressed into the pillow. ‘Until now. I hadn’t even thought about what it—might _mean_. But I still meant it.’

‘That’s good,’ Viktor had said. ‘I mean it too.’ He slipped his hand into Yuuri’s palm, resting beneath his chin. Their rings grazed together, and the sight of it... ‘I’ve never meant things with as much truth as with you.’

On the phone now, he closed his eyes and imagined that Yuuri was sitting in front of him, breathing his air; that they were looking at one another and recognising something of the other in themselves.

‘Soon,’ he said, quiet.

He could hear Yuuri’s throat hitch. ‘After?’ Yuuri said.

Viktor’s mouth pulled up at the corners. He brushed a thumb over the metal band. ‘Soon.’

 

* * *

  

This insanely beautiful artwork was created by [uneballe-unmort](http://uneballe-unmort.tumblr.com/) at Tumblr. You can see, like, and reblog (please do!) the [original work here](http://uneballe-unmort.tumblr.com/post/155281776038/they-had-looked-at-one-another-breathed-the-same).

I'm speechless and so touched every time I look at it. ;__;

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Please click [Kudos ❤], comment, and/or share the fic with others if you enjoyed!
> 
> [Talk to me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/) | Beta'd by the glorious [Andrea](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com/)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/)

****

# Viktor

****

Yuuri was sleeping in the passenger seat, and Viktor was trying very hard to keep his eyes on the road. He had his knees curled up against his chest, a cheek on his shoulder, his hair a mess. He smelled of liquor and needed a shower. Viktor pulled his eyes away.

He had leaned on the bonnet of his car outside Yuuri’s hotel that morning. The sun had barely risen, and Saga was an odd, quiet thing, caught in the surfacing moment between waking and sleeping. Phichit had left already on a bullet train back to Tokyo. Cars were few on the roads, pedestrians were fewer. The air was new and chilled, but the weight of it promised to be a warm day. Viktor saw Yuuri immediately as he slipped through the revolving doors of his hotel.

‘Hello, there,’ said Viktor, feeling deeply amused. He unfolded his arms and stepped away from the car.

There were smudges of tiredness beneath Yuuri’s eyes, and he walked with the sensitivity of someone who was new to light, aching with every slow step, like there were needles sitting beneath his skin, pressing into him. Viktor tried not to say _I told you so._

‘I feel… terrible,’ Yuuri said, pressing himself into Viktor’s arms. His words were muffled into Viktor’s shoulder.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Viktor. ‘You sounded rather… intoxicated.’

There was a moment of silence, and Yuuri pulled away. His eyes were clouded in confusion. ‘What? When?’

Viktor stared at him. ‘Last night. When you phoned me. Multiple times.’

The silence stretched, and this time it took on a different quality. Yuuri’s eyes were alarmingly wide as he pulled the phone from his pocket. The screen lit up his face, his fingers swiped through the call history, and a groan slipped from the back of his throat.

‘Not again,’ he whispered, a hand pressed over his eyes.

‘It was endearing,’ Viktor told him. ‘At first.’

‘Viktor, I’m so—’

Viktor pressed away a smile, and held the car door open. ‘Get in.’

He turned the heating on in the car, pulling away from the hotel and towards the motorway that led back to Hasetsu. Yuuri’s fists were curled and shaking in his lap, and Viktor reached over to brush a thumb across his knuckles.

Yuuri said, quietly, ‘Did I—say anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Viktor.’

Viktor kept his gaze steady on the road and bit the inside of his cheek. He could hear Yuuri’s voice in his ear, quiet with every call. He remembered the banquet so clearly, the warmth of Yuuri’s body against his, the laugh that had come from him with an ease that Viktor had wanted to match.

And yet, last night, there had been none of that. It had been softness, a quiet certainty that Viktor was coming to see in him. A sureness of his own convictions, and being startled by it. It was like he had pulled on a new skin and was trying to walk around in it.

No. It was like he had shed off the old, and was coming to learn the thing that he had always been underneath, entirely real, and entirely true.

‘Nothing you didn’t mean,’ said Viktor. _I can’t wait to be married to you._ ‘Nothing I didn’t want to hear.’

‘ _Viktor_.’

Viktor’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. ‘Get some sleep, Yuuri,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll be back in Hasetsu in an hour.’

 

* * *

 

 ****

#  **Yuuri**

Yuuri should have been on the rink. He had a little over four months until the Nebelhorn Cup, and there was a routine to perfect that wouldn’t buckle on a landing and pull him and Hatsuyo to the ice. It hadn’t been soft beneath him at the International Challenge, in the Netherlands, and he knew it would not yield a second time.

He felt, still, the quietness of that moment. The echo of his skull hitting the ice, Hatsuyo’s panicked breath in his ear, the music playing in a dull cacophony around the rink as everyone _watched_. He knew what a fall could do. He knew what a slip could mean. He knew what it was like to have every jump lose its rotations, for form to slip away as the music played and didn’t seem to stop.

He had seen it in JJ at Barcelona. He had seen it, already, and felt it, already, in himself.

Except Viktor had been watching, and Hatsuyo had been pulling him up and whispering that she was sorry, and they were lulled back into the motion of the skate, knowing that something had been lost, and having to keep going anyway.

It sat heavily inside him, something tight in his chest that made him want to pull into himself and not come out. It was different this time. It was not like it had been before, and it wasn’t worse, but the difference did not mean it was better.

He knew that Viktor was right; he knew it hadn’t been his fault. He knew that the hangover was sitting under his skin and at the edges of his skull and pressing on him with the thought, the idea that, somehow, it hadn’t been.

_Stop trying to take the blame to make it easier. To make things accountable to one thing so it’s easier to understand._

Yuuri squeezed his eyes shut tighter. He didn’t think that was right. It wasn’t easier. It was just what he knew, this anxious, lurching creature. It was not so much welcoming an old friend as it was letting the devil back into the place it had made for itself before.

He had thought, recently, that it might have left entirely.

He pulled the sheets closer about himself, afternoon sunlight slipping beneath the closed curtains, and felt the warm press of something at the back of his neck. His skin shivered at the light touch, flushing, and he felt the sinking weight of the mattress as Viktor knelt down above him.

‘How are you feeling?’ Viktor murmured. His hair hung loose around his face, and Yuuri wanted to reach a hand up and run his fingers through the strands. Light cut through the gap in the curtains, and dust drifted in the soft lines of it, pressing close and warm around Viktor’s face.

‘I’ll be fine tomorrow,’ Yuuri said. ‘I’m sorry—’

Viktor touched a finger to his lips, cutting him off from an apology that he had already offered so many times. Yuuri still felt like he had to make it. Viktor was bowing down, back curved, and Yuuri barely felt the stretch of his own head lifting from the pillows to meet him.

It was long, lazy kissing. It was not the soft touch of tasting, tentative presses, questions held in their mouths; it was not heated and desperate, a longing for something that was consuming and _more_ than anything they could ever be able to give each other, and knowing that they could still try.

Yuuri felt Viktor’s mouth moving against his and felt how much he wanted this; this felt like warm spring days spent in quiet, heat-edged shadows. This felt like the answer to a posed question of a kiss; this felt like finding what they had been yearning. They held, between them, all they had been looking for.

Yuuri would gladly spend a day like this, with his hands full of Viktor’s skin, and his warmth, and his hair, and he would know that it would not be something that was wasted. There would be nothing lost from a day spent like this.

Viktor’s hands had moved beneath Yuuri’s shirt, and they were a steady warmth on his ribs. He imagined that the pulse of his heart was something like the beat that throbbed through Viktor’s veins, and he could taste heat in Viktor’s mouth, and on the soft pliancy of his lips. This wasn’t taking—this wasn’t even giving. This was a revelation of finding someone who stood entirely with you; someone you neither need to rise nor fall to meet.

It was effortless, and Yuuri’s mind, scrabbling for something, like it was making its way through the gnarled branches of a rotten tree, was breathlessly grateful for it. With every breath Viktor breathed into him, every smooth drag of his fingers over Yuuri’s skin, he felt himself climbing higher, elbows and knees knocking against the branches, and each knock ached less, bruised less, than the last.

And then, eventually, he was standing at the top of it, on some peak as golden dawn light washed over them, over their linked hands, as they met each other where they were.

And the view, unrestrained and deliberate as their kisses—it was outstanding.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri had grown up knowing that skating was not his gift. He had grown up knowing that it could still be his. 

He had grown up knowing that being the best at something—something unnatural to him—would make him understand a different meaning of ‘working hard’. It was not spending free time on the rink anymore, it was staying there until his feet were blistered and bruised, until every slip onto the ice felt like it was shattering his bones, until the music wasn’t needed because he heard it when he slept, until the music wasn’t needed because his body moved on its own.

Working hard meant, not _getting_ things as Viktor or Yuri did, but spending the time coming to understand them. It meant spending hours learning how to bend his knees for a jump, because his body couldn’t tell him when to take off. He was not Viktor or Yuri, guided by some steady, benevolent pole, something inside them that kept them safe and knowing—an Apollo, a Hermes. He was Icarus, flying blind, knowing things were getting too warm, too hot, too much, and not knowing he was going towards the sun.

In April, they went to Gangneung, South Korea, for the Four Continents, to see how the skaters who performed there didn’t fall to the ice—how they remained, as the competitors at the Worlds had, a total fluidity that Yuuri felt entirely unprepared for.

The sense of time felt like it was pressing on him when he watched the skaters, jumps synchronised, lifts executed clean and steady. He knew what Viktor would say: _You don’t see yourself._ But there was no mirror in front of him, and even when Viktor filmed him and Hatsuyo, it was difficult to separate one’s eye from seeing everything that was wrong, rather than something that he might have been doing right.

The worst thing, watching them, was realising that at times Yuuri and Hatsuyo had looked like that. Their jumps, often, were uniform; Yuuri could lift her safely and well, and trust her to do the rest. The worst thing was that the slip at the International Challenge had been an accident—nothing more. Human anatomy, a tremble in their physiology. A hitch that they couldn’t train out, or prepare for, and yet.

‘It didn’t happen to you,’ Yuuri said to Viktor. It was late, and they hadn’t long arrived back in Hasetsu from the airport. The inn was sleeping, and Yuuri was sitting on the end of the bed, pulling his shirt over his head. His words were muffled: ‘You’ve never slipped up in a competition. Even with Sascha you don’t slip.’

‘It could happen to anyone, Yuuri,’ said Viktor, leaning against the closed door. His hair was ruffled from the travel. He looked tired as heavy night skies, and his eyes were star bright. ‘It’s a statistical probability. I’ve just been lucky. Maybe next time it will be me.’

‘I don’t want that. I don’t want you to fall so I’ll feel less—like this.’

‘Like this?’

Viktor put a hand, warm and steady on the side of his neck. Viktor’s eyes stole something from him every time he looked into them.

Sometimes, it was like Viktor was taking those quick, thrumming heartbeats he felt too heavy in his throat. Sometimes, it was like Viktor was stealing from him the moments where he could not sleep, and the moments where he slept too long. Sometimes, it was like Viktor was taking the silent moments that filled his head, and he was filling them with something else.

They would not always go, and Yuuri thought they might not ever leave, but Viktor was filling empty vases with flowers, and brushing blue across bruised skies. He was turning everything into something that was beautiful, and that Yuuri wanted to keep and hold for what it was, and what it had become—without changing what it has always been.  

‘I can’t help it sometimes,’ Yuuri told him. ‘Even when you’re here. Even when I should be nothing but happy because I’m with you, I…’ He gave a hapless, helpless shrug that said only what he couldn’t say.

‘You’re human,’ said Viktor, kindly. ‘That doesn’t make you weak, it makes you—susceptible. It means that things won’t be kind to you. To anyone. It means that fighting it makes you the strongest thing I’ve ever known. It means that if you fall on the ice it’s hard to get up.’ Fingers curling beneath his chin. Viktor’s lips were so close. ‘It doesn’t mean I won’t be there every time helping you.’

‘You said you would stay by my side.’

‘I _showed_ you that I would stay in a way we both knew.’

‘Showed me?’ said Yuuri. He felt, in Viktor’s touch, the promise of it—what it had been in December, their bodies pressed close, what it could be. Now.

Viktor was standing between Yuuri’s parted thighs, and he leaned down to press his hands on the sheets. Yuuri would only need to press forward to meet his kiss.

Viktor said, ‘Do you want me to show you again?’

‘No,’ said Yuuri. He watched Viktor take this in, watched him blink, slowly. ‘I want to show you.’

They were undressed in seconds, flushed and standing wholly naked before one another. There was no fanfare; nothing lingered. Nothing lay hidden between them. Their gold bands glinted at one another, and it was ridiculous that the glimmer of it on Viktor’s finger set Yuuri’s heart alight.  

Viktor stepped forward—

‘No,’ said Yuuri. ‘On the bed.’

Viktor didn’t move for a moment, hesitant and warring, and when he did, he moved like he was being watched. He moved with a confidence that stilted between steps, with glances that Yuuri matched, unwavering, resolute. He watched Viktor and liked that Viktor was aware of it; he liked, endlessly, that Viktor might feel a weight at the end of his gaze.

Yuuri stared at him as he pulled himself onto the bed, cross-legged, spine curved, and it was a moment before Yuuri followed, pushing Viktor back with a palm pressed against his chest, waiting for Viktor to put his legs out beneath him. Yuuri felt like he was placing him, arranging him. It was a heady feeling that burned low in him like a furnace. The dip of Viktor’s hip bones was begging for the scrape of his fingernails; the loose parting of his thighs was beckoning a kiss on his skin. Yuuri wanted to feel the pulse under his mouth, the tension singing in his blood. Would he taste the desperate need in the salt of his skin?

Yuuri leaned back, knees folded beneath him as he sat astride Viktor’s hips. Beneath him, Viktor was a stretch of long pale limbs and blushing, milk-coloured skin; his muscles trembled under Yuuri’s hand.

‘Yuuri, let me—’

‘No,’ Yuuri said again.

Yuuri could see the struggle in him, knuckles white and twisted in the sheets. He was a length of straining want, a back that wanted to curve and rise, heels that wanted to be digging in low and pulling Yuuri in, breath sharp in his lungs. They had done nothing, and Viktor’s eyes were a blue-grey that struggled to exist, a hazy sky smothered by a wrecking storm.

Viktor’s ribs were heaving beneath his skin, and Yuuri swallowed the pressure in his chest as he wrapped his fingers around Viktor’s cock, and tightened, and felt Viktor bucking beneath him.

Yuuri moved his hand with a loose flick of his wrist, the length of Viktor hot, pulsing against his fingers. A lid cracked open, and Yuuri reached behind him with curving fingers. There was slight pressure, a give, and Yuuri’s breath caught in his throat. His head fell forward with a caught breath, snatched away from him.

Viktor choked. ‘Yuuri, please—’

‘Let me do this,’ said Yuuri, breathless, hands working in a slow, joined rhythm. ‘I need you to let me do this. I need to be—in control of something—’

‘Control?’

Yuuri shook his head, eyes closed. ‘Not like that. I don’t want to control you. I want to feel like I can do something.’

Viktor’s look, beneath a haze of heat, was bright. ‘I don’t think you need to—’ Yuuri tightened his grip, and Viktor’s head fell back again, throat exposed, eyes sightless. His jaw was working around a soundless word. ‘— _prove_ _this_.’

Yuuri knew that. He knew that Viktor didn’t need to know anything from Yuuri that wasn’t obvious. But this wasn’t, wholly, about Viktor. This was about them, and about Yuuri being who he was. This was about having a cloud of doubt like curled smoke, charred and lingering in him, and having Viktor brushing it away. This was about knowing that Viktor would let him make his point where it wasn’t needed, and yet where it mattered. This was about being able to _make a point_ , and knowing, even before he started, that it could be made.

There was no risk. There was no doubt. This was an entirely foreseen outcome, and Yuuri could hold the truth and certainty of it in his cupped palms, like holding liquid starlight. This: Viktor sweat-slicked and undone beneath him, waiting and dependent on him, an arrow quivering, Yuuri pulling on the string.

He worked a second finger inside of him, a third, shoulders curving inwards, bowed over himself. Viktor was breaking under him, breath catching and tearing in his throat, ice thawing and slipping through the heat of Yuuri’s fingers.

Eventually Yuuri shifted, thighs trembling as he kneeled over him. ‘I’m going to—’

‘Are you sure?’ Viktor said, coming back to himself, barely. His eyes were seeing something else in Yuuri, and his words were thick and weighted, hanging on some precipice, too willing to surrender. ‘You’re not—Is it enough?’

Yuuri said, ‘I want to feel it,’ and lowered himself.

The stretch of it was unbearable. Yuuri could feel it like a stone lodged in his throat, breath stolen as he let the strength in his thighs give way with a shudder. The slide of it edged so close on painful; it was setting him alight. He felt like oil spilled over a flame.

He felt like he was centred, entirely, and their joining was the only place they touched. This didn’t feel like breaking—this felt like earth re-working itself after the shatter of a lightning strike, raw and open and brazenly vulnerable.

Viktor was straining beneath him, hips pushing upwards. Yuuri couldn’t stop watching the working of his throat, how he struggled for air, struggled around words that wouldn’t come. Beneath him, Viktor was a caged, charged thing, a storm pulling itself apart.

‘Yuuri, please,’ he whispered, hoarse. ‘Let me touch you.’

‘No.’

Yuuri leaned forward, and linked his hands with Viktor’s, until they were stretched above Viktor’s head. There was no space between them, nowhere they could be parted. Yuuri’s cock was a slow, heated slide against the slick skin of Viktor’s stomach. There was no movement between them but for the slow, steady roll of Yuuri’s hips, and Viktor’s hands shaking with the grip, tight, too tight, and Yuuri didn’t want to let him go. They were thrumming like live wires.

‘Like this,’ Yuuri said.

Viktor said, ‘Do you feel—in control now?’

Yuuri’s hips stuttered, losing the motion of it when Viktor seemed to catch him on the inside, cutting through him. He felt reworked, reshaped, and new. He felt like he had become something better—by himself. Viktor’s grip tight in his hands; Viktor a trembling, quaking foundation beneath him.

This moment felt like what they were—how, always, they had been and done things.

Yuuri let himself sink down, let himself rise in a steady, easy ride, and then he rose, rose, and he felt himself tightening around nothing. The emptiness, the loss, was dementing. A whimper wrenched itself from Viktor’s throat.

‘Do you feel controlled?’ Yuuri said. The words were strangled and torn from him. He could barely get them past his lips.

‘I feel desperate. I feel like I’m—hanging and—’

Yuuri gripped him, sank back down, fast enough to knock the breath from him. The fullness was impossible. ‘Are you close?’ he managed.

Viktor’s breath was a shudder that covered the length of him, skin and muscle rippling. Yuuri felt it inside him. He had the crazed, impossible desire of wanting to put a hand on his abdomen, wanting to place Viktor’s hand there, wanting to feel, through the barrier of them, where Viktor had made his way inside of him.

‘So close, Yuuri—So—’

‘Then why—are you holding back?’

Viktor’s hair was dark, damp from sweat, and Yuuri felt the tension in him. The shuddered need for release warring inside him. Warring with what?

‘Because you—wanted to control this. And I—’ Yuuri shifted, and they were forced into gasping stillness. A moment passed. Viktor’s eyes were blazing. ‘—I want to let you.’ He said, ‘You didn’t say I could.’

The stillness, this time, was deliberate. If he wanted, Yuuri could pull off him, and step away, both of them aching. If he wanted, he could spill across Viktor’s stomach and fall into him, and Viktor could have nothing—be given nothing, be allowed nothing.

Yuuri moved. The slowness was gone. They were falling into each other now, pushed down a mountain with a heel pressed into the dip of their backs. There was nothing to stop them. Viktor’s head was turning against the pillow; his neck was a strain of one throbbing, blue vein; his thighs and stomach were iron-hard; he was raging, and silent.

Yuuri said, ‘You can come.’

Viktor sobbed. There was something, fundamentally, coming apart inside of him. He was on the edge of something. It was like he hadn’t understood, like he wasn’t hearing. ‘Yuuri, please—’

‘Yes, Viktor.’

‘Yes—Yes?’

Yuuri let go of his hands, fingers tangled, and he let Viktor move, wrap his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders. There was no way for them to be closer, and Viktor was surging like a river bursting its banks in a storm. Yuuri could only hold on—let himself be held. He felt the water, the force of it, swelling, rising, ready to drown, ready to wash them away, leave them clean and new.

He couldn’t brace himself for this, and he didn’t try. Viktor’s hands were bruising around him, pulling him through; Yuuri’s thighs were tight around his hips; there was no space, nowhere to go; the rocking was unending, peaking, rising rising _risingrisingrising_ —

 

* * *

 

—gone.

 

* * *

 

‘I didn’t need that to feel better.’

‘I know.’

‘You make me feel better. You make me—so _happy_ and I—’

‘It’s okay, Yuuri,’ said Viktor. His fingers were lazy through Yuuri’s hair, nails trailing on his scalp. Yuuri felt lit up. ‘It’s okay to want it sometimes.’

‘Only sometimes?’

Viktor’s laugh was muffled and groaning. He had an arm wrapped around Yuuri’s waist, Yuuri pressed on him, a leg thrown over Viktor’s hips, and Yuuri felt the warmth of it everywhere. It was baffling that touching, skin on skin, could be the same, and in minutes it could feel so different.

‘If we did that more often then I think… You’ll ruin me entirely.’

‘Entirely? Partly ruined already?’ He could hear him saying it: _No one can be more perfect._

Viktor laughed louder. ‘You have an issue with my impossibilities, don’t you?’

‘Never,’ said Yuuri. He wanted to pull himself closer, but Viktor had filled every space, every small break in him, every line and tear in the fabric of him. There was nowhere more for him to go. The air was cooling around them now, a chilled brush through the heady thickness of the room. It had the charged aftertaste of a lightning strike, and Yuuri felt like he could feel it burning, tingling on his lips.

‘This is what it all comes down to,’ Yuuri said, lips murmuring against the soft skin of Viktor’s shoulder, a hand on Viktor’s chest. Viktor was unmarked, and Yuuri could spend hours marvelling at the feel of his skin, the look of it beneath his hands. ‘I don’t understand why there could be something wrong with this.’

Viktor’s fingers, trailing across the length of Yuuri’s spine, stilled. ‘There isn’t.’

‘Chenkov seems to think there is. Other people think so.’

Viktor’s voice was careful. ‘You want to talk about Chenkov. Now.’

‘No,’ Yuuri said. ‘But you’ll tell me soon, won’t you?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ There was no accusation in Viktor’s words; they held nothing but calmness, a bland curiosity that Yuuri knew buried deeper inside him.

‘Because it’s important to you.’ He paused. ‘Not important, just—I meant that it’s been a part of your life that has…’

‘I’ll tell you soon. If you think it will mean anything.’

Yuuri glanced upwards. He wondered when _soon_ was. He wondered why they had to put limits on this. It was not, he thought, that he needed to be ready for it. It was that Viktor did.

Yuuri said, ‘I think it will mean something. I think I’d know you more.’

‘You don’t know me now?’

‘I think there are parts of you that you hide because you think it’s better,’ Yuuri said, softly. ‘And I know what it’s like to want to hide something. To feel like if someone knows every part of you, they’ll turn away.’ Yuuri pressed his lips to Viktor’s shoulder, to his arm, reached up and pressed them against Viktor’s neck. Viktor yielded beneath his touch, and let his hand drift again over Yuuri’s back. ‘I wouldn’t turn away,’ Yuuri said. ‘Ever.’

‘I never thought you would. I chose you, remember?’

A smile was tugging at Yuuri’s lips. ‘I don’t think you did.’

Viktor made a thoughtful sound. It was warm, and amused, and a drowsy thread lingered in his voice. Yuuri felt like he held the string of it between his fingers; that he could pull on the end of it and see what it looked like, bare and undone.

‘Maybe not,’ said Viktor. ‘Maybe we met halfway.’

‘Maybe.’

‘It’s not like it matters.’

‘You don’t think so?’

Viktor’s fingernails brushed against Yuuri’s side and he wriggled against him. Yuuri knew Viktor liked it when it was like this, soft, teasing, playful. It felt tentative, ready to break into something more if they wanted, skirting at the edges. It felt, too, like they were winding down into something limp and settled, and learning how to feel in a way that was new.

Viktor said, ‘You said this was all it comes down to.’

Yuuri opened his mouth.

‘Let’s sleep,’ said Viktor. The room was dark. The light outside had that pregnable feel of being lifted from the night and carried into the morning. It made Yuuri feel like he was running from something. He pulled himself against Viktor, and felt a sheet pulled over him, sealing them against one another. There was no escaping, and Yuuri closed his eyes, smiling into Viktor’s skin. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave if he could.

 

* * *

 

‘What if we put in a quad?’ said Hatsuyo.

‘Why?’ said Sascha. ‘For what reason?’

‘We saw a quad in the Canadian entry yesterday. It made it more complex.’

‘More complex than it needs to be. Just because you throw in another jump that doesn’t mean anything if you can’t execute it well. You hardly ever see a quad in a pair skate.’

‘Making things more complex than they need to be is the whole point of the Worlds, isn’t it?’

Sascha rubbed a hand across her eyebrows, and Yuuri leaned back into Viktor from where they were standing on the edge of the rink, Viktor’s arms wrapped loosely around Yuuri’s front. It was the morning after their return from South Korea, and after last night, Yuuri’s hips were aching. The feeling of it made him bite the inside of his cheek, and Viktor’s glittering gaze was too much to keep a hold of for long when he caught it.

Viktor was always like this, wearing a look that said, _I remember what we did._ Yuuri felt himself flush red and bright under that look, a flower being watched and waited on to bloom.

Sometimes he was lost in the realisation that the body, warm and hard behind him, was Viktor. Sometimes he was lost in the truth that what he had wanted, dreamt about, was a thing that was given to him. It felt, now, almost easy. Almost mundane. But then that feeling would fade, and Yuuri would be startled all over again.

‘Why not go the whole way,’ said Viktor, voice light in Yuuri’s ear. ‘Just add a triple combination jump while you’re at it.’

Hatsuyo was frowning. ‘I can’t tell if you’re mocking me or not.’

‘Ignore him,’ Sascha said. ‘Hatsu, if you add jumps, and something goes wrong, you’ll just bring your score down. If you can perfect what you have already it will be fine.’

‘We had perfected it,’ said Hatsu. ‘If I hadn’t—It would have been perfect. If the routine becomes more complex, and we fall, we can boost the score in recompense.’

Sascha’s look was torn. Yuuri could see the conflict in her: to run the risk of turning the routine into something more challenging for the better, or to hope only that nothing like their fall would happen again. Viktor had said it was the luck of the draw—a statistical, unfortunate probability. But Yuuri wasn’t sure what they would do if it happened again.

That was a lie. He knew what would happen: simply, they would not advance to the Four Continents. Everything they had built so far would mean nothing.

‘Another year,’ Viktor had said, at the International Challenge. ‘There’s always another year.’

But they knew, all of them, that it wasn’t that easy. This wasn’t the pressure of wanting to win a gold for one’s own sake. This was something more. This felt like a pressure slowly closing in around them.

‘I think Hatusyo’s right,’ said Yuuri. ‘We’re stronger with our synchronised moves. We’re not relying on each other, just on our own skill and ability to keep time. As a single skater, I’m going to find that easier anyway.’

‘You need lifts, Yuuri,’ said Sascha. ‘Otherwise you’re just… skating in sync.’

‘But a quad would help, wouldn’t it? If we can’t push a triple lift into a quad, why not do it in the toe loop? Hatsuyo could do it.’

Sascha wasn’t looking at him when he said this. She was looking at Hatsuyo. ‘Where would you put it?’ she said. ‘If you keep with the regulations for the Worlds, you have a lasso and hand-to-hip lift at the beginning of the first half, and your lateral in the second.’

‘Not to mention the two throws,’ said Viktor. Yuuri knew that if he turned and glanced at him, his face would have a still, far-off look. He wasn’t arguing about this. He looked, probably, like Sascha did. It wasn’t a case of  wondering if they could do it anymore. It was wondering where they could put it.

‘I can pull off a quad in the second half,’ said Yuuri. ‘I have the stamina.’

He felt Viktor’s lips at his ear. His words were close to breathing. ‘I’m becoming acutely aware of that.’

‘ _Viktor_.’ Scandalised. Viktor’s soft laugh said that, after last night, the outrage was misplaced.

‘I can try,’ said Hatsuyo, ignoring them. ‘The triple toe and double toe at the end. We could change it to a quad and a triple?’

‘You already risk yourself putting the side-by-sides at the end,’ Sascha said. She shook her head. ‘None of this will matter if there’s another fall.’

‘It won’t if another fall doesn’t matter to us anymore. We barely lost any points in the Netherlands. What we lost was confidence after it.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sascha, rubbing a hand against the back of her neck. Yuuri watched as she skated around the rink in small, wandering loops, before heading back over.

‘What’s holding you back?’ said Viktor. ‘You’re nervous about this. Why?’

‘Does there have to be a reason?’

‘For you?’ said Viktor. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Maybe I just don’t want this to end badly.’ She looked at her girlfriend. ‘Hatsu, this is—You’ve talked about this with me since I was eighteen. I couldn't bear to see it if this went wrong.’

‘There are ten ways it could go wrong, Sascha. More. We knew the risks before we started. Risks that had nothing to do with setting foot on the ice.’

‘This whole thing is a risk,’ said Viktor. ‘We knew that. We’ve known that since December. You can’t honestly pull out—’

‘I’m not _pulling out_ , Vitya,’ Sascha snapped. ‘ _Rádi bóga…_ ’

‘Then get on with it,’ said Viktor easily. ‘Hatsuyo wants to do this. Yuuri is happy. They’re not your team.’

‘I want to go back to bed,’ Sascha muttered, rubbing at her eyes. She pointed a finger at Viktor. ‘I’ll blame you if this goes wrong.’

Yuuri stood straighter, but Viktor’s arms tightened around him.

‘Go ahead,’ said Viktor. ‘I think we’re good at that, aren’t we?’

Her look was a scouring, cold thing, but there was something in it that had shifted from reflexive spite to irritation. After Yuuri had gone to Saga with Phichit, something between them had shifted, and neither he nor Hatsuyo had understood what it had been. They knew only that they were grateful for it. Sometimes they couldn’t tell what had lingered beneath Viktor and Sascha’s words, but they had been bone-dry and cutting, wicked sharp and promising blood.

‘Fine,’ said Sascha. ‘Put the quad in. Might as well throw in the triple combo while we’re at it.’

Hatsuyo threw her hands up. ‘Is _anyone_ saying this seriously?’

 

* * *

 

April slipped into May. The sakura shed their blossoms in a pink rush, and their routine began to form with a slow, careful steadiness. Steady, too, was the warm air creeping through the town, pulling at the colour of the sea and pushing dark mornings and dark nights away from each other. Soon the sky was a stretch of dusty pink as they ran back from Ice Castle in the evenings, and the doors of the inn were slid open in the day to welcome the salt-tinged breeze.

At night Yuuri could hear the trill of the cicadas, a beat that hovered in the night, a sound that settled in him and made him think of hot summer nights, the lazy spin of fans on the ceilings, and hot skin twisted in thin sheets. Yuuri had never spent a summer with Viktor so close, and it was a quiet thrill to know he would, soon, look upon Viktor in the glow of a heated morning, stretched out and shadowed by a new sun, glittered by sweat. Yuuri imagined him: a form made to be seen and to be touched beneath a whispered brush of fingertips, a statue come alive beneath his hands, yawning, yearning, remade.

Yuuri woke slow and lazy now. The room around him was sun-warm and creeping into shadowed light. He felt the ache in him of a hard skate from the day before, muscles shuddering, pulsing with the stretch against the sheets. His fingers fisted in the material; his feet stretched downwards. He loosened himself with a content sigh.

‘Hello,’ he heard, low and amused. Sated. Yuuri wondered if Viktor knew how he sounded in the mornings. If he understood what a thing it was to wake up to that sound, nestled among a sigh of sea waves and the lazy hum of insects.

Yuuri turned his head and pulled on his glasses. On his stomach, he propped himself up on his elbows. Viktor was looking down at him, sitting up against the headboard. He was morning bright, and… Yuuri paused.

‘What is it?’ he said, voice scratchy with sleep.

Viktor, looking at him with a strange intensity, like he was waiting for something, tensing for something, glanced down.

Yuuri followed the gaze, confused—and stopped. His mind was rearranging itself with the slowness of being newly, dazedly awake.

There, in the space on the sheets between Yuuri’s elbow and Viktor’s hip, lay a small, black box. Inside the box lay a ring. It was a plain, gold band. Identical to the one on Yuuri’s finger now, but for the small, diamond inlay nestled in the center of it.

Looking at it, Yuuri felt a dizzying sense of disconnection. He was struggling to match meaning and vernacular and _sense_ with the sight before him. Yuuri could hear every sound outside of the room: the lodgers opening doors in the corridor; the quiet chatter of guests walking the paths to the _onsen_. The sea, beyond, making its slow ebb and flow across a pebbled shore. The gulls with warm air beneath their wings.

He pulled his eyes, slowly, back to Viktor. He realised what he was seeing in Viktor’s expression, the hesitant tightening of his eyes, the soft curve of his lips that couldn’t quite be called a smile. It was nervousness. Viktor was sitting straight now, his legs crossed, hands clasped tight in his lap. They weren’t shaking. His knuckles were white.

‘I wanted—to do it properly,’ Viktor was saying. His eyes were impossibly blue. Yuuri couldn’t tell if he was hearing or listening. ‘Nothing implicit. This isn’t just a thank you. Or a good luck.’ Viktor’s breath was low as he drew it in, gathering himself. ‘I am—Yuuri, I’m asking you to marry me.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/)
> 
> **Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed!**  
> 
> 
> My thanks to [@sub_textual](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual) for all her help on this chapter, and to my outstanding beta, [Andrea](http://thislovelymaelstrom.tumblr.com).


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late(r) chapter, everyone! Christmas and university and work etc. etc. You know the drill with writers!
> 
> All my thanks to [Andrea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/themaelstromwrites/pseuds/themaelstromwrites) and [Kuri](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual) for all their help (technical and otherwise) with this chapter. Couldn't do it without you guys! xxx
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# Viktor

_Yuuri, I’m asking you to marry me._

The silence was empty, and had weight to it. It was the silence of drawn-in breaths, held too long; the silence of a quiet forest, nature pulled into itself—into the roots, the burrows, the hollowed-out trunk of a tree. It was a silence you could hold, with the heaviness, and feel it in the shape of your palm. Its rough edges and smooth corners. Feel it, but not hold it, because it did not want to be held.

‘I don’t—understand,’ said Yuuri. He blinked at the ring, and looked up.

His confusion was recognisable: the confusion he had worn a year before, when Viktor had stood and felt the water of a hot spring run in rivulets down his skin; when Viktor had run fingertips across the slope of his neck, his jaw, beneath his chin—and Yuuri had run. The confusion, splayed on Yuuri’s face, of underestimating himself, perhaps.

Or, looking at him now, perhaps not.

Viktor forced himself to soften his lips into a smile, to settle his voice into something low and calm.

‘What’s there to understand, Yuuri?’ he said.

And Yuuri said, ‘Aren’t we already engaged?’

Happiness, sharp and swift, bloomed in Viktor’s chest, a too-fast spring forcing flowers into being. It caught him like the chill of a St Petersburg wind, cold in his throat, seizing his lungs, a grip tight around his heart. Except it was hot and biting. It was entirely too much. Viktor thought, by now, he should have grown used to it.

‘Already,’ he said. Evenly.

‘Barcelona,’ said Yuuri. His brow was furrowed. He looked so _young_ , and Viktor felt so old. ‘Wasn’t that—I mean—what did you—think that _was_?’

Viktor was feeling, so steadily, things start to shift. _I can’t wait to be married to you,_ Yuuri had said. In the hotel room, he had said, _I_ _hadn’t even thought about what it—might mean_. _But I still meant it._

It was the same moment, now, as in Barcelona, sitting around a table in the restaurant, and coming to learn that Yuuri had no recollection of a moment Viktor hadn’t stopped thinking about for a year, hadn’t stopped using as context—as a foundation—for the way he chose to act in every communication with Yuuri after that.

It was feeling that they had, for so long, been operating, and existing, on different wavelengths. It was wondering if they would ever exist on the same—if he wanted them to.

Yuuri was a blushing surprise. He was the breezy whisper of summer-night wind, a tickle on your skin, the playful slide through loose strands of air, the caress on your nape. Yuuri was reaching for one thing and getting another: sand in place of glass; a rose instead of its thorns; a furrowed brow in place of a smile.

‘But we didn’t ask each other,’ Viktor said.

Yuuri was staring at him. ‘You thought I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘You thought—that I wanted—’

Viktor shook his head. ‘No, I knew what you wanted. I knew what I wanted. I just—people do it like this, don’t they? They ask before they give the ring.’

‘But why do we need to do it like other people?’

There was nothing accusatory in his tone. It was light, inoffensive. Viktor felt it stab in him. And yet the blade was knowing, and slid home neatly and painlessly; it felt like it had already carved a place for itself in him so many times before, an earring into a pierced lobe, a knife into a block, and was fitting back in where it belonged.

Viktor had had enough. He reached out and pushed the box of the ring closed, the snap a startled sound in the quiet of the bedroom.

‘Fine. We’ll do it as we’ve always done it. Pretend I said nothing—’

A hand on his wrist. Viktor looked at Yuuri, whose expression was flooded with hesitancy, his lower lip drawn up between his teeth. His eyes were on the ring box.

‘I didn’t say—I didn’t _want_ it . . . Just that I didn’t think we needed it.’

Viktor tried to hide a smile. ‘So you _do_ want this,’ he said calmly. He could feel the warmth creeping into his mouth, could feel the brightness of his own eyes. ‘And I want this. What else is there left to say?’

Indeed, what else? What else but—

‘Yes,’ said Yuuri. He was breathless, and incandescent. ‘Yes, I’ll— _marry_ you. Of course I’ll marry you.’

 _Marry you_ , he said, and Viktor thought, now, that Yuuri was understanding.

They had known what the other meant. They had known, the whole time, what they had meant to one another. But hearing it now, like this, entirely intent, sent a thrill of pleasure through them both. Symbolism was lost. The ring meant nothing other than what it was. The bareness of it was not barren; it was a ray cutting through storm clouds. It was release, final and shuddering and breathless. It was a smooth pebble held in a hand: small, perfect, natured.

Viktor blinked. ‘Are you crying?’

Yuuri wiped a hand across his eyes, skin pink from the touch, and wet. ‘I’m sorry—’

‘Don’t be.’

Yuuri nodded, head ducked. ‘I was just so— _alone_ , and I—I never thought I would be given this kind of happiness. And I’ve been given it from _you_ and—’

He drew in a slow shuddering breath. Viktor had opened the ring box again, and was sliding the ring with careful ease onto his finger.

‘You’re never alone,’ Viktor told him quietly. ‘I’ll alway stay close to you. I love you too much to ever leave.’

Yuuri’s only answer was a kiss. It was a hand in Viktor’s hair, too tender, lips firm against his own. There was no getting lost in this kind of kiss; there was simply an offering. Rise and meet it. Join it. A hard, certain union. Unwilling to yield. Unwilling to let this be anything—let this be mistaken for anything other than what it was.

A proposal. An offer of marriage, given approval.

 _Yes,_ he had said. _Yes. Yes. Yes._  

 

* * *

 

# Yuuri

‘Is that your phone?’

‘Hm?’

‘Ringing,’ said Yuuri. Everything was feeling hazy and distant, and he didn’t want to move from the way Viktor’s skin felt so warm against his own, how it made the ache in him a good thing—too good. He wanted it again. He didn’t want to stop looking lazily at the new ring on his finger, how his hand looked on Viktor’s chest. He didn’t want to think about the low buzz Viktor’s phone was making on the side table.

He untangled himself with a quiet sigh as Viktor reached over and swiped it from the table.

Viktor didn’t look at the caller ID.

‘Yes?’ he said, sitting cross-legged and naked and perfect on the bed. His voice was scratched and worn, and Yuuri felt heat curling in the base of himself at the sound of it.

There was a flurry of sound, thick and fast in the static, and Viktor was holding the phone at an angle away from his ear, eyebrows raised, mouth open in a small, parted ‘o’.

‘Who is it?’ Yuuri murmured.

Viktor mouthed, smiling, _Anna. My age—_

His expression shuttered. ‘He did what?’ he said into the phone. He was, suddenly, very still. It was a stillness that was almost frightening.

A pause, longer this time, and Yuuri crawled over to him, pressed his lips to the top of Viktor’s spine, his arms winding their way around his stomach. Anna’s voice, through the speaker, had settled as she spoke.

‘Yes, I understand,’ Viktor said. Yuuri could feel the vibrations of his words running through him. He held tighter. ‘Yes, I—No, I don’t know how.’ Viktor swallowed. ‘Can you fix it?’

The silence was deafening, and Yuuri could feel his heart rising up into his throat. _Fix what?_ What did Viktor not know? What did he understand? What had happened while they slept? While Viktor slid a ring on his finger and told him he loved him? While he made love to him?

‘There’s something you need to know,’ said Viktor. He was, perhaps purposefully, not turning to look at Yuuri. ‘About me and Yuuri. And Sascha and Hatsuyo.’

Yuuri thought he heard the words clearly: _About time, Viktor._

‘We won’t tell our agents until we can’t hold out anymore,’ Viktor had said, back in January, when the article was published in _Sovetsky Sport_ and Viktor had nothing left to do but nod, ‘but we have to tell them.’

‘Have to?’ Hatsuyo had said, a firm press of her lips. ‘I think that’s overstretching things.’

‘I understand,’ Sascha had said, and the look Hatsuyo shot her was one of slight hurt—of betrayal. _I thought we were in this together,_ it said. Sascha looked at her girlfriend. ‘He has a management team, Hatsu. How can they represent him if they know nothing about him?’

‘They don’t have to know everything—’

Viktor cut her off. ‘So when my backers and my advertising contracts fall through, and my team doesn’t know anything about what’s happened, that’s okay?’

‘I didn’t say that—’

‘It was implied,’ he’d said, in that bright voice that lingered on condescending, and often tripped straight into it with no preamble. ‘Better to use them to stimulate good press than tell them nothing, no?’

Hatsu’s lips were still in that firm, thin line. She had accounted for everything—had planned every detail of this with a fine-toothed comb. She had not, apparently, accounted for Viktor.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, when he lay pale and hard and real in Yuuri’s bed, that he was who he was. That he was this entity that existed both in his room, and outside of the boundaries of Hasetsu, a town, sleepy and blushing in the approach of summer, where he belonged on screens and billboards and in magazines.

Yuuri had never been able to set those two apart. No—he had simply never, before he knew him, been able to tell that Viktor existed beyond the screens, beyond the distant figure on the rink. It seemed funny to him now, listening as Viktor spoke with Anna, that he should have remembered Viktor only as the man who asked him to marry him and who watched him come apart with those achingly blue eyes. Yuuri had to piece him back together now, and it was difficult. He felt like he was holding onto Viktor with curled fists, begging him to stay this version of himself, but he was realising that like this, Viktor was only a piece, and Yuuri wanted more for him to be whole.

‘How soon can you be here?’ Viktor was saying. He pulled the phone away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then. You can meet Yuuri at last.’

 _At last_ , Yuuri thought. At Viktor’s tone, he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

 

* * *

 

‘Chenkov did _what_?’ said Hatsuyo.

Sascha said, ‘This is all my fault.’

Yuuri’s mind was reeling, and he barely heard Sascha’s quiet admittal. All he could hear was Viktor’s words replaying in his head, as they sat on the floor around one of the tables in the inn. A fan spun warm air overhead, the beat of it like a pulse.

‘Chenkov sold our story to the press,’ Viktor had told them. ‘He said we’re pair skating so we can get to the Worlds. He said once we’re there you’ll swap with me or Yuuri. That’ll you make it your skate. He fucking—he sold us out.’

A sharp silence descended around the table, filled only, a beat later, with Hatsuyo and Sascha’s words.

‘How does he even know?’ Yuuri had said, helpless. How had this happened?

‘It was me,’ said Sascha. She had been picking at a bowl of sugary _karinto_ , and was now wiping her fingers into a napkin. Her hands were shaking. ‘It’s because . . . I went to him when Viktor said no. I thought—I thought he’d want the publicity more than he’d stick to his prejudice.’ She shook her head. ‘And now he has both.’

There was a heavy, thick silence. Viktor, with his lack of reaction, the slight tightness around his eyes, and his mouth, must have known. Around them, the guests at the inn were drifting in from the baths, drinking from bottles of beer and pots of steeping green tea. His parents were wandering about, serving food and topping up drinks. Mari was still sleeping in her room, ready to work the evening shift.

‘You were only helping,’ Hatsu told Sascha. ‘You didn’t—you didn’t _mean_ it.’ Her words were weak, and Yuuri didn’t know how much she believed it herself. This was Hatsu’s plan. Had Sascha told her she’d gone to Chenkov? Or had she, only, said she would find someone else?

‘I thought—’ Sascha’s eyes flashed to Viktor. ‘I was so stupid.’

‘I don’t know if it counts for anything,’ said Yuuri. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it now. We just . . . We need to move on. We need to think about what we can do. Viktor’s management team will come here, and things will be fixed.’ He said to them, and to himself. ‘It’ll be okay.’

He refrained, barely, from looking at Viktor and saying, _Won’t it?_

‘I should call my dad,’ was all Hatsu said. She looked at Sascha. ‘You should call your manager, too.’

‘Mine’s just going to quit,’ said Sascha, winding an arm around her drawn-up knees and running a hand through long, blonde hair in a jagged pull. ‘When they found out I was gay they almost cut my contract entirely.’

Viktor said nothing to that; Hatsuyo looked only saddened. Like they both knew—like that was a thing that was allowed or supposed to happen in this world. Yuuri stared at her. ‘Isn’t that— _illegal_?’

Viktor sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘After the Worlds, you’ll need a good team anyway. You need a group who support you. _This could be huge_ , you said.’

‘ _Could_ ,’ Sascha echoed. ‘I meant if it worked. This . . . I’ve ruined it for all of us anyway.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Viktor said. His voice was slow, and uncertain, like he was figuring the words out only as they fell from his tongue. Like he hadn’t realised them as truth, as innate belief, until now. ‘It’s not— _You_ didn’t do this. Chenkov did.’

The room seemed to grow quiet. Yuuri could feel his heart throbbing, tense with something he couldn’t name.

‘Really?’ Sascha said. It was a whisper. Hatsuyo had taken her hand, and she was brushing her thumb across the knuckles.

Viktor’s jaw shifted. ‘If anything . . . it was mine. For not agreeing in the first place. That you had to go to him—’

‘ _Niet_ , _Vitya_ ,’ Sascha cut through, voice so startlingly intense that Viktor blinked. ‘You were doing what you thought was right. My decision was my decision, and yours was yours. I could never—I could not _begrudge_ you for that.’

Viktor looked at her, and Yuuri felt like something was dawning between them. Something old, dust brushed away with a steady exhalation. Warm air after a too-long winter. A body, stretching itself, relearning aching bones and creaking muscles, re-knowing itself as what, once, it had been.

The ache, shuddering, was a pleasant thing, and Yuuri felt himself warmed by it.

If nothing else, then at least there was this.

‘It’s funny, really,’ Viktor said, with that sharp, blank smile he sometimes wore that did not reach his eyes. ‘He’s trying to get us suspended—get us sanctioned by the ISU—get us expelled from the public eye. He hasn’t realised that this is going to make the press want to speak to us even more. He hasn’t realised the sponsorship deals we’ll get from this. That we’ll become spokespersons.’ He laughed, short and humourless. ‘He doesn’t realise he’s turning us into martyrs.’

Except martyrdom was for the dead, but Yuuri wondered if this would be anything else. Forced from competitive skating if this blew up. Titles relinquished; his Grand Prix Final win, possibly, removed. Wouldn’t that be a kind of death in itself?

He’d known this could happen. He’d known something, somewhere, could go wrong. He’d just never thought it could be because of someone else. He’d forgotten the power one voice could yield. He’d forgotten how eagerly people would choose to clamber and listen to that one, single, undeserved voice.

‘He’s never been smart,’ said Sascha. ‘Even at Sambo he was—Chenkov never thought about _repercussion_.’

Viktor said, ‘That’s called ignorance, Sascha dear.’

‘So what now?’ Yuuri asked. ‘We wait for your team to get here?’

Viktor nodded. ‘We wait. I’ll tell them everything, and then—you’ll all need to speak with your reps. We’ll arrange a conference call between all of them. And then . . .’

‘This all goes out into the world?’ said Hatsuyo. ‘This is . . . as far as it gets? This is the end of it?’

‘No,’ said Viktor. His smile, slowly, had taken on an edge. ‘This isn’t the end at all.’

 

* * *

 

‘I’ll cut that fucker up with my skates the next time I see him I swear to—’

‘You’ll do _no_ such thing,’ Viktor cut in swiftly. ‘Though . . . the sentiment is touching.’

Yuuri hid a smile as Yurio’s face screwed up on the screen, green eyes lined, mouth set in a sharp scowl. His arms were folded as he leaned back in the chair, the portrait of Mila blown up behind him. Yuuri remembered when Yurio’s voice had slipped through the speakers before Christmas, how, now, his face seemed a little sharper, the beauty of his features harsher and cutting. The soft effeminacy was taking its leave—in its place was something harder, and brutal, and no less startling.

The call had come through Viktor’s laptop before they went to bed that night, and the onslaught of Russian swearing that barraged its way through the video call was enough for even Viktor to blush across the arch of his cheekbones.

‘Otabek’s visiting and he thinks it’s fucking bullshit, too.’

Otabek’s voice was a flat line laced with amusement: ‘I don’t think I said it _quite_ like that, Yura.’ His face appeared over Yurio’s shoulder, and he gave a half-wave through the screen.

‘Otabek!’ Viktor cried warmly.

Yuuri blinked at the Kazakh skater in surprise. ‘You’re in St Petersburg, Otabek?’

‘Obviously,’ Yurio muttered.

Viktor’s face was almost pressed to the glass. ‘Has he taken you to the palaces, Otabek? The Hermitage? Kazan?’

‘I—We’ve seen some of the sights . . .’

Yurio was scowling still. ‘He’s my friend, not yours. Back off, old man.’

 _Friend?_ Yuuri thought. Otabek’s cheek was almost pressed against Yurio’s where he leaned in, and neither seemed bothered about the fact.

‘What are you going to do?’ said Otabek, serious. ‘About the Russian?’

Yuuri watched Yurio’s expression even out with the question and take on a fervent sort of intensity that said Viktor only had to say the word. Only had to tell him what he wanted him to do, and it would be done. That kind of loyalty was breathless, and Yuuri knew that it was not misplaced, because it went both ways, a spider’s web threaded between them, strong and vicious as razorwire.

‘My team is arriving tomorrow afternoon,’ said Viktor. ‘They’ll give us some direction to go in.’

Yurio chewed on his lip. ‘Do you think—I mean—Is this—’

‘The end?’ said Yuuri. ‘No, Yurio. At least . . .’ _I hope not._ ‘At least not if we can help it.’

Yurio nodded, an inward gesture that told Yuuri nothing of what he was thinking. Viktor was watching the boy intently, and Yuuri wondered what he was seeing. He forgot, sometimes, that Viktor had watched Yurio grow up and become the figure that now sat across from him through a screen, sixteen and growing and learning, golds settled indelibly, invisibly, around his neck.

‘And if it _is_ ,’ said Viktor, wrapping an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders, ‘then at least we tried, didn’t we?’

‘I think it is very brave,’ said Otabek. He had a way of talking, of looking, that was solemn; it made a conversation seem heavier than it was, cloaked with some quiet valour. It made what Yuuri and Viktor and the women were doing some glorious adventure that was both wondrous and tragic, and leaned towards the latter.

‘We appreciate it,’ said Viktor. ‘I suppose it goes without saying that you won’t actually tell anyone.’

Yuuri expected some expression of wounded pride, something that matched the new scowl on Yurio’s face, but Otabek’s look was calm as he said, ‘What would I gain from it?’

There was a pause. It was not the gallant declaration that Yuuri had expected; this, instead, was edged. Viktor didn’t seem surprised by it.

‘I think I’m brushing off on you,’ Yurio murmured, glancing up with a small smile that was wholly new.

Yuuri wondered if that was necessarily a good thing, but Otabek didn’t seem to mind. Instead, the edge seemed to become something else, softened, somehow, and Yuuri found himself intrigued by it. Or not by them so much as by Viktor’s reaction, the stillness of those blue eyes, the smile that Yuuri wanted to trace with his fingers.  

Yuuri sighed quietly. He thought about the ring on his finger. He thought about Sascha and Hatsuyo. He thought about the proposal he had woken to that morning. _Yes_ , he had said, so freely, and so willingly. And yet he had not asked himself—not asked Viktor: _When?_

 _When,_ at the moment, was not possible. When did not exist. There was no when, not until a dotted line had been signed. Not here, anyway, in Yuuri’s home. Not in Viktor’s. But where was Viktor’s home? At Yuuri’s side, he was warm, and solid, and perhaps _where_ did not matter. Perhaps _when_ did not, either.

‘You’ve seen Yuuri’s ring?’ said Viktor, lifting Yuuri’s hand, waving it in front of the webcam. ‘We’re _engaged_ , Yurio.’

‘Like you weren’t ready for fucking matrimony six months ago?’ said Yurio. He barely spared a glance at his screen.

Viktor made an annoyed sound. ‘Does _no one_ understand?’

‘It’s a nice ring,’ said Otabek.

Viktor beamed. ‘ _Thank you_ , Otabek.’

‘It’s a lovely ring,’ Yuuri murmured.

The sound Viktor made was appreciative and low as he pressed his lips behind Yuuri’s ear. ‘ _Thank you_ , Yuuri,’ he said, in a new voice.

‘Fuck this, I’m disconnecting,’ said Yurio, turning the laptop around until the webcam settled on the living area of Mila’s apartment. ‘Try not to . . . fuck up too badly after tomorrow. Things were getting interesting here for a while.’

Viktor’s lips quirked. ‘Thank you, Yu—’

The call ended.

‘Oh, that _little_ —’

Yuuri cut him Viktor with laughter, pressing the tips of his fingers to Viktor’s mouth. The blue in Viktor’s eyes were the blue of a sea glittering beneath a summer sun, wide, expansive, more dangerous than bewitching if you fell into it. Except looking into them, feeling the fragile lines in the skin of Viktor’s lips, Yuuri felt that if he fell, he would not sense the danger. He would feel only the blissful stillness of knowing he had lost himself in something so calm—so heart-achingly beautiful.

‘I’m so thankful,’ Yuuri said.

Viktor’s lips moved beneath his touch. ‘For the ring?’

‘Yes,’ said Yuuri. ‘But for you, too.’

Yuuri watched, with some fascination, how Viktor’s pupils darkened, how his lips parted, and opened. The first flash of his tongue on Yuuri’s fingers was hot and trembling.

His breath hitched. ‘Viktor . . .’

‘They won’t be here until tomorrow. Afternoon.’

‘We should be up early to practice.’

Viktor’s gaze was unwavering. ‘We should,’ he said. He closed the laptop, leaning away to put it on the floor beside the bed. When he turned back, he was already in movement, reaching for Yuuri’s hand. Reaching a hand to the back of his head to draw him close. ‘But for now . . .’

Yuuri smiled, and let himself go. For now. They had this, now. They had this, no matter whatever anyone said, who they said it to, how they said it, for time to come.

 

* * *

 

They waited for Viktor’s team to arrive the next day from Los Angeles. They turned their phones off, turned the TV channels in the inn to something innocuous and filled with adverts and no news reports where Chenkov’s face could stare out at them, and winnowed their time away on the rink, the welcoming ice, and coldness, a smooth expanse of white that was strong and certain and unmarked in a way that they were not.

Yuuri wondered if, after all of this, in a few months, it would be as easy pulling out a machine and smoothing away the scratches in the surface. If they could see every groove and mark they had cut into the ice, washed away and left clean and glittering again, newly impenetrable.

Except he remembered: that wasn’t how it worked. It wasn’t smoothed and worn down. The scratches and the marks were all still there. There was just a new layer of water drenched over it, left to freeze, the proof of what they had done, what they had been, hiding beneath that new surface.

Skaters were not skaters because they put blades on their feet and dared someone to come close as they moved on the ice. They were skaters because they _were_ the ice. Resurfaced and re-washed and covered up, able to smile at the end, able to cry, with shaking legs and shaking hearts, knowing that it wouldn’t last forever. Knowing that soon they would be smooth and pretty again, and everyone would believe it. They would remember the thing that lay beneath as something that had been, and not as something that still was.

‘I think they’re here,’ said Mari, carrying a keg of beer through the front door of the inn where they were eating dinner together, in silence, each of them lost in heavy thought.

Yuuri had expected Viktor to try and turn it into something light, to tell them all _not to think._ But he hadn’t, and Yuuri couldn’t help but watch as Viktor wrapped his mouth around the neck of a beer bottle and drank slowly, throat working carefully, long, fine fingers tight around the body. His smile, when Yuuri reached tentatively for his hand, was barely a tilt of the corners of his mouth.

Yuuri knew that Viktor was not a hypocrite; he could not tell them not to think, when he could not do it himself.

 _Chenkov._ Yuuri felt his eyes narrow, whenever he remembered the Russian’s name; his close-shaven head, his wolf’s smile.

Viktor had said he would tell him about Chenkov soon—tell him about Sambo. Tell him what it was that lay hidden in him since he had been a teenager. Tell him why it was that he should have been surrounded by people, and yet was friendless. Tell him why it had been so easy for him to pack everything away in St Petersburg, and fly out to a little town in rural Japan without a backwards glance.                                                                                                                                                                                             

Yuuri did not hate easily. He did not hate at all, really. But he wondered how much of it had to do with Chenkov, because he wanted to hate something for once. It would make looking at Viktor’s quiet expression easier, when Viktor should have been looking at the new ring on Yuuri’s hand—looking at Yuuri—and thinking about how, soon, they would be aligned with one another like parallel blades, like stars. _Husbands._

Yuuri glanced at Mari as she settled the keg behind the bar. The door was left open behind her, and he could hear the sound of gravel crunching under tyres, and brakes whining, cars coming to a rolling stop.

He looked at Viktor, and as one, the four of them pulled themselves to their feet. The sigh they let out was collective, and worn. They wanted to be skating. Time was slipping away until Hatsuyo and Yuuri’s competition. It shouldn’t have to be spent on publicity; in fact, the idea had been not to involve the media at all.

They heard car doors slamming out the front of the inn, and then three figures were filling the doorway. Their eyes all fell on Viktor, and then the rest of them, immediately.

Yuuri instantly recognised Anna as she came forward and pulled Viktor into a hug. She was a small, redheaded woman who barely came up to Viktor’s chest. Yuuri had seen her face through a number of Skype calls, and heard her Californian accent over loudspeaker even more. Seeing her in person—seeing the four of them—was jarring.

There was his publicist, Dawie, a dark-skinned South African man, and a tall woman with slate-dark eyes and grey hair who must have been Viktor’s lawyer, Grace. Viktor’s manager, James, was shrugging off a jacket and glancing around the inn with wide, hazel eyes. Where Viktor was wintry, silver hair and snow-white skin, James was sun-warmed sand and calm as summer air. His grin was lazy and made him no less easy to look at, and it reminded Yuuri distinctly of Chris.

‘It’s good of you all to come,’ Viktor was telling them, hugging them each in turn, except for Grace, to whom he simply offered a bright smile and a handshake.

Dawie rolled his eyes. ‘It is actually our _job_ , Viktor.’

‘To clean up my messes, apparently,’ said Viktor, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck.                     

‘To help you through . . . difficult circumstances,’ said Grace. She spoke with a steady, careful calmness like every word was pre-ordained. It reminded Yuuri of frozen lakes under star-full nights.

James’ eyes were still roaming the inn, and Anna was paying none of this any attention, tapping on Viktor’s elbow in a childlike sort of gesture. When Viktor looked at her, she was shifting her head at an angle, eyes wide and intentional.

‘Oh, of course,’ Viktor said. He laughed suddenly, shortly. _How could I forget?_ ‘All of you,’ he said. His eyes were shining bright when he turned to Yuuri. ‘This is Katsuki Yuuri. My fiancé.’

_Fiancé._

A thrill ran through Yuuri at the word. If Yuuri was standing in a blizzard, Viktor was the heat of a cabin fire, the layer of blankets, the curling steam of a bath. The word sounded familiar, and warm, and everything Yuuri thought he had ever wanted to hear.

‘It’s good to meet you,’ he mumbled, offering a bow.

Their smiles and greetings were bright. Even Grace’s dark eyes, the slight upturn of her lips, were kind. Knowing.

Yuuri felt gratitude washing over at him, sudden, and immense—that Viktor had these people at his side. That they were the sort of people who would, and likely had, done a lot for Viktor. Too much, maybe. Except for Viktor, _too much_ did not exist. You did for him, only, everything you could. Because when he looked at you, he promised to do the same.

 

* * *

 

After introductions, they moved to the function room, where Grace had taken one look at the long, low table, and before Yuuri could offer a chair or cushion, had fallen with elegance to the matted floor.

They were pulling out laptops and notepads while their eyes roamed, and fell on the four of them, sitting on the other side of the table. They stilled, and stared. Waited. _Out with it,_ their eyes were saying. And, after a moment of uncertainty that washed through the skaters, Viktor told them.

The reactions were few, and understated. Dawie raised his eyebrows, James rubbed a hand over a stubbled jaw, Anna’s hands paused as she typed notes on her laptop—before continuing as if it had never happened—and Grace only inclined her head. It was not Phichit’s reaction: loud and shocked and wary. Or Viktor’s, before Christmas approached: angered and panicked.

Yuuri remembered how Viktor and Sascha had looked at him and Hatsuyo when they’d decided on adding a quad after South Korea. How, eventually, there was no arguing, no attempt to change anyone’s mind or reject it. There was, only building momentum, and acceptance, and their eyes deepened as their minds were set to calculation and consideration.

Now, Viktor’s management team was looking at the four of them with the same expression.

‘That will be the end of your Russian sponsorships,’ was the first thing to be said.

Viktor smiled at Grace, a half-curve of his lips, tentatively offered. ‘I know this will be a mess for you and Curtis to sort through the contracts.’

James gave a small shrug of his shoulders, barely an effort. ‘You might lose the Russians, but we’ll get you the Americans. Something about clouds and silver linings?’

‘I was thinking more Dr Seuss,’ said Anna, hiding a grin. ‘Those who don’t mind, et cetera.’

‘Should we be talking about sponsors now?’ said Hatsuyo. Worry was etched into her face. ‘What about Chenkov? How are we reacting to his . . . statement?’

Dawie ran a hand over a clean-shaven head. It was impossible to tell his age. There were no lines on his face, and with Grace’s grey hair and Anna’s tiny, red-headed stature, they seemed, in a way, timeless. Like they belonged to somewhere that was other. They looked out of place in the inn, with their business suits and their technology, and somehow, strangely, a part of it.

It reminded Yuuri of when he had walked into the inn, a year ago, and Makkachin had launched himself at him and then, after, when he had skidded into the _onsen,_ Viktor had been there, unclothed and perfect, steam-warmed and flushed, asleep on the floor of the inn. He had seemed other, and unreal, his green robe parted to reveal an expanse of a pale, muscled chest, rising in the steady throes of sleep. And yet, Yuuri could not remember looking at him on a TV screen, or from the stands of an ice rink, and thinking that he looked any more perfect than in Yuuri’s home.

Looking at his team in the inn was like seeing the small parts of Viktor, broken apart and scattered, fitting themselves back together.

‘How do you want to react?’ said Anna, head tilted as she looked at Hatsuyo. ‘This is entirely your call.’

James nodded/ ‘Just tell us how you want this managed, and we’ll . . . manage it.’

‘Just like that?’ Hatsuyo said, because Viktor’s manager made it sound like a magic trick.

It was Grace who said, evenly, ‘Just like that.’

‘Would you like my advice?’ said Dawie.

Viktor nodded. ‘Please,’ he said. The word was tinged with a desperation that Yuuri thought had probably gone unheard by most of them. Only he and Sascha cast him a long look.

‘I’ve been contacted by most of the networks for an interview,’ Dawie said. ‘I suggest you go with CNN. Give them an exclusive—no one else. They will do the work for us, and relay it on a global scale. Given your desire for secrecy . . .’ Dawie sighed, and spread his hands. ‘It makes things difficult—’ Hatsuyo opened her mouth. ‘—but I understand the necessity for it,’ he added smoothly. ‘You cannot deny what’s true. That leads to scandal, and you _do not_ want to be known as liars.’

‘How can we tell the truth without giving everything away?’ Yuuri asked.

Dawie’s smile was not really a smile, only a cool-eyed look and an imperceptible tilt to the corners of his mouth. It was a smile that reminded Yuuri of Viktor. He wondered who had learnt it first: publicist or skater. Perhaps with each new challenge, each new pedestal Viktor had climbed onto with blistered feet and cold, ice-bruised skin, they had learnt it together.

‘Not lying does not mean telling the truth,’ Dawie said, his voice pitch-dark and enigmatic. ‘Simply, you circumvent the questions. We will screen them before the interview. You will tell them how much work you have been doing, the challenges you have faced working in pairs. You might, if you wish, talk about what an _interesting_ idea Chenkov has had. Which is not an admittal.’

‘And what if they ask if it’s true?’ said Sascha, hands in white-knuckled fists on the table. Her accent had thickened since yesterday, as Yuuri was coming to understand it did under stress, the r’s rolled, her throat sounding tight. ‘You can’t _circumvent_ that.’

‘We won’t let them ask the question.’

‘And how suspicious will that look,’ Hatsuyo murmured.

Dawie’s pressed smile had not disappeared. ‘Less suspicious than if they ask, and you give a half-truth. That would be an admittal in itself.’

‘What if a tabloid runs it?’ said Viktor. ‘What if they say Chenkov is right?’

‘Slander or libel,’ said Grace, simply. And then she paused, and leaned back slightly. ‘Actually, no. Since, well, Kazimir Chenkov _is_ right.’

Hatsuyo made a distressed sound. ‘This is such a mess.’

‘Just because a tabloid runs an article that doesn’t make it right,’ Anna told her, her look full with sympathy. ‘Any serious sports professional would pay attention to the networks before they look to tabloids.’

‘What about the ISU?’ Yuuri asked quietly. His throat felt tight, words cloying. ‘Since that’s the only thing that really matters. Public reaction . . . it doesn’t mean anything.’

Hatsuyo’s look was one of slow, dawning horror, as if she were only now realising that too. Chenkov could say what he liked, but it was the determination of the ISU that changed anything. It was the ISU, only, that made a difference here. Would they investigate Chenkov’s claims? Would they call the four skaters in for some sort of investigation? Would they bother to do anything at all?

‘One would think so,’ said Grace, with the slight incline of her head. ‘Except without actual evidence, the ISU cannot prohibit you from competing. They know you have been competing as male-female pairs, and as far as they are aware, the scores you gain in competition are the only things that matter to permit you entry into another competition. You have not broken any rules.’

‘But we will,’ said Sascha.

‘But you _have not_ ,’ Grace said, stronger this time. _‘_ Anything Chenkov says is simply accusation. The ISU cannot remove you from competing due to suspicion of _potential_ rule-breaking. Who is to say your actions would even be carried out? It wouldn’t hold.’

‘Not only that,’ said Dawie, ‘but Chenkov has miscalculated. He has assumed that given a certain outcome, he would win—but he won’t. He should have known that the ISU would not pull you from skating because of this. Viktor is too popular. If Chenkov is proven wrong, Viktor gains the public’s sympathy. If he is right, you become figureheads for the LGBT movement in figure skating, not least in sports. There is no version of this where it ends with you on the losing side.’ He glanced at Anna. ‘Now you can use Dr Seuss.’

James frowned, sandy brows drawn inward. ‘Silver linings would be better.’

‘But I told Chenkov,’ said Sascha. ‘I told him on the phone that—’

‘Did he record that conversation?’ said Grace archly. ‘I doubt it. And if he did, it would not be admissible in court. It is a private conversation recorded without consent.’

‘There is . . . something else we should talk about,’ said Anna. ‘Viktor and I spoke about this before we left LA.’

Yuuri glanced at Viktor. His expression gave nothing away.

‘If you succeed—if you get to the Worlds, then the public reaction will be huge. I have spoken with the president of sports at CAA, and we think it would be in all of your best interests if your representation was handled by our company.’

Sascha inclined her head. ‘Appreciated.’

‘Representation?’ said Yuuri, head spinning.

‘But my dad represents me,’ said Hatsuyo.

‘With all due respect, Hatsuyo,’ said James, ‘this is going to require more than one person—for each of you. With the amount of media coverage this could get, not to mention the endorsements and the public appearances, you’ll need a team to help you. To protect your interests.’ His eyes fell on Yuuri. ‘Both of you.’

Anna spread her hands wide across the table. ‘CAA is the biggest player in the field.’ She paused.

‘Biggest skater on the rink?’ said James.

‘Thank you.’ Anna continued, ‘We represent more Olympic skaters in the world than anyone else. We can help protect your interests, no matter _what_ happens.’

‘They’re right, Hatsu,’ Sascha said quietly. ‘We knew this from the beginning. We talked about it, remember? In Piter.’

‘But my dad—’

‘—will understand. He was a hockey player. He knows what’s it like.’ Sascha’s gaze softened. ‘He knows you’re not a little girl anymore, Hatsu. You’re doing your own thing. _Your_ thing. For yourself.’

Yuuri could feel Viktor’s gaze on him, patiently waiting, and nothing more. All of it, almost, was too much. But Viktor’s look was grounding when Yuuri met it, when their hands slipped into a familiar, steady clasp. For Yuuri’s whole career, his management had been dealt with by his coach—first Celestino, then Viktor. Because he wasn’t _like_ Viktor, whose face was a prize and a valuable asset in and of itself. He wasn’t an Olympian. He hadn’t, really, expected to win the Grand Prix.

 _He wasn’t Viktor_. And now, suddenly, the pedestal he was stepping onto was the same one Viktor stood on. The same one Sascha and Hatsuyo were pulling themselves up onto as well. Yuuri felt like he was standing there, looking around himself, and he shouldn’t have been there. He felt out of place; he felt like the rough stone on a beach of smooth pebbles. He felt large and lurching, stumbling his way through figures carved of marble that were made to dance.

He felt, now, like he was every one of those scratches in the surface of the ice, like every groove and deep mark, and they were on show. This, he could not resurface. This, he could not hide himself away from. This, he could not cover with water to freeze and trust to make him smooth and glittering and pure, not matter how illusory.

‘Yuuri?’

Warmth, grounding and soft, as Viktor rubbed his fingers across Yuuri’s nape, over the bump of his spine, through the hair grown long down his neck, half tied back from his face.

Yuuri leaned into that touch, felt himself pulled back into an orbit where he knew his own seasons; he knew the tilt of his own axis, and when to turn to face his sun.

Yuuri looked at Viktor. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, breathing slowly. ‘It’s a lot.’

‘It _is_ a lot,’ Viktor agreed steadily.

‘It just . . . with the media, and with all this talk of—of management and publicity and public appearances and _sponsors_ and—’

‘Yuuri. Yuuri, look at me.’

Yuuri thought he had been looking at him, but his eyes were closed, and he only realised he was trembling, when he felt the stillness of Viktor’s hands holding his own. He knew the others were watching him. He knew he was being—ridiculous and unnecessary and—scared. He was being eclipsed.

He had thought, after he’d stepped foot on the rink in Barcelona, after he had slid onto the ice with Hatsuyo at his side in The Hague, that he wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore. The weight, something dark and immense, sitting close on his skin, pushing itself down and somehow _in_. And perhaps he wouldn’t. But this fear was different. It . . . felt different, and hesitant and momentary. Tasted different on his tongue, an aftertaste. It was not something he could grasp; this was elusive and transitory; this fear was a changeling.

Because it was not about going onto the ice and skating a routine. There were too many variables. Too many _what ifs_. And so it could slip—and had slipped so easily from his fingers, with nothing to grab hold of. And so what you held in your hands was not the real thing at all—not something to be thwarted. It was only the taunting ghost of it. A joker instead of an ace. A gift-wrapped box full of polystyrene. Glass that sparkled and glittered, but would not prove to be a false diamond unless you looked close enough.

Yuuri did not, he decided, want to look close enough.

‘I’m looking,’ he whispered. And if he wasn’t—well, there was not much he could do about that. He could hear Viktor, feel his warmth, and for now, that had to be enough.

‘Yuuri,’ said Viktor. ‘ _Solnyshko_. I’m not going to tell you that this will be fine. Fine is—fine is a lie, and it’s not good enough. And you deserve good enough. So what this will be, is wonderful, and exciting. And you said to me, when you were with Phichit, that you couldn’t wait to be married to me.’

Yuuri’s eyes opened wide, and Viktor’s smile was knowing. It was the smile he had worn last night, and Yuuri wanted to fall into it just the same.

‘And you said that you couldn’t wait to have adventures with me. And this—whatever it turns out to be. However far we get—or don’t get. Whatever it brings us at the end of it . . . This will be only one of our many adventures. Only one part of how we’ll get to spend the rest of our lives together.’ Viktor leaned in, so close, and Yuuri could feel the warmth of his breath. ‘And I can’t wait to spend it with you.’

 

* * *

 

‘So, your response to Kazimir Chenkov’s claims are that . . .’

‘Claims. That’s an interesting word.’

The reporter, Viola, glanced at Viktor. ‘That’s . . . all you’d like to comment?’

‘They _are_ claims,’ Yuuri said, repeating Viktor’s words. ‘We can’t respond to something without proof.’

‘Despite the fact that Kazimir Chenkov has claimed one of you has had personal correspondence with him on this matter.’

Viktor shifted in his seat, the leather creaking. His smile was wide. _‘Claimed._ That word keeps . . . cropping up, doesn’t it?’

Yuuri pressed down a burgeoning smile, one seeping with an indulgence and a smugness that would not fit well on his face.

The interview, to the reporter’s credit, was not like it had been with Matthew months ago. This, instead, was a piece of rope coiled tightly around their wrists—the skaters’ wrists, ready to pull it taut when it loosened, Anna, Dawie and Grace standing a way off to keep the tension. They knew the questions—or, rather, they knew the direction they would take, since Dawie wanted their reactions to be natural.

They met the team from CNN in a hotel in Saga a few days after Viktor’s management had arrived. Chairs were arranged in the living area of the room, a sponsored backdrop erected behind them, lit up by spotlights and framed by overhanging boom microphones. It was intimate in a way the interview with Matthew had not been: enclosed, somehow, with the interviewer’s chairs seated beside their own, curved in slightly. It had the quality of a conversation, though it was not a conversation, and the tension in the air was palpable.

‘Whatever you do,’ Viktor had said as they settled into their seats, ‘make sure you get a good angle on Yuuri’s ring.’ He winked. ‘It’s meant to be seen.’

Hatsuyo, sitting beside Yuuri now, was still shaking slightly as the questions continued.

Yuuri shifted to the side slightly to lean his arm against hers, because he remembered that they were partners, and Dawie gave him a small thumbs-up at the action.

 _Solidify the notion that you are partners two-fold,_ Dawie had told them, turning around in his seat as they drove to to Saga. _Yes, you’re romantically engaged, but remind everyone watching that you are partners on the ice, too. Don’t let them forget that—or think that this is a sham. Because until you get to the Worlds, it’s every bit as real as any other partnership you have with one another._

Yuuri watched Viola, a black woman with her hair pulled up high in a tight pony tail, drag her finger over the tablet in her lap, before her eyes seemed to zero in on the screen behind her glasses. She made a small sound of approval, and then lifted her gaze to the four of them.

‘If Chenkov were in this room now,’ she said, ‘what is it that any of you would like to say to him for the allegations he’s made?’

They all glanced at Viktor, a gravitational look, but it was not Viktor who answered.

‘I’d say he made an error of judgment,’ said Sascha, seated furthest from the interviewer. ‘I’d say it’s a shame any differences that might exist between us couldn’t have been resolved until the season was over, without bringing our professions into it.’

‘There are differences between you that go beyond skating?’ asked Viola, her eyebrow raised. She pushed her glasses up again, forefinger resting on one of the arms, contemplative. Reporters, Yuuri was coming to realise, had a tell. A _this could be something big_ gleam. This, apparently, was Viola’s.

Sascha gave a half-shrug. ‘Skaters often have personal history with each other. It is a small pond.’

It was vague enough, but there was a warning there. Viktor, later, would berate Sascha for the slip, because Yuuri knew that more _history_ hovered between Viktor and Chenkov, thick and choking as an oil spill, impossible to wash off. Talking about it in an interview would be like trying to wash it off with water; worse, it would be waving a lit match in front of it and hoping it didn’t catch.

‘Do you think his claims were timed to fall as the new season approached?’

‘It is a possibility,’ said Sascha, with another shrug. ‘But I wouldn’t accuse him of anything. That would be . . . _impolitic._ ’ She glanced at Viola. ‘Is that the right word?’

‘Oh, I think that works nicely,’ said Viktor cheerily.

Viola made a sound like a laugh, an amused, frustrated exhalation as she shook her head and pushed her glasses more firmly up her nose.

‘A pleasure, as _always_ , Viktor,’ she had said when they arrived in the hotel lobby. Her lips were still curved in some imperceptible smile of amusement. It was as if Viktor had told her some joke long ago, and she was only now understanding the punchline.

‘Let us move onto the season ahead, shall we?’ Viola said now, with a tone of finality. Dawie, behind her, had shifted. ‘Yuuri and Hatsuyo, if I understand correctly, you’ll need to lift your scores at the approaching Nebelhorn Cup in September to reach the Four Continents?’

‘That’s—that’s right,’ said Yuuri, clearing his throat. He sat up slightly in his chair. ‘We were hoping the International Challenge would carry us through, but . . .’

‘You experienced a fall on the ice.’

‘It wasn’t meant to happen,’ said Hatsuyo. ‘I mean—of course it wasn’t _meant_ to happen, but—it was our first time skating competitively together. It was new. We’d slipped in practice but it was different with an audience. We just . . . let it get to us.’

Yuuri knew that too well. He could feel ice, bright and endless, rising up to meet him. He could feel the weight that pressed so knowingly on him more than a year ago now at his first Grand Prix. How every popped jump became heavier than the last, how every spin lacked grace and finesse and became nothing but just a turn of his body, fundamental—and failing.

He knew it was more than the audience, or the judge’s watchful gaze from their seats like gatekeepers. But having eyes on them, watching the way he placed himself when he was already so conscious of it, of every shift of muscle and sinew reworking itself beneath his skin, was almost unbearable.

He wasn’t like Viktor, who bathed in that look. Who glowed, somehow, fed by the audience’s rapture. Yuuri’s performance left him with sticky palms and shaking knees, and he had to pull himself through with the knowledge that Viktor—pretend that _only_ Viktor—was watching.       

 _I’m doing this for me,_ his routines said. _But I’m doing this for you too._ And now, with Hatsu, it became something new: _I’m doing this for us, and I’m doing it for them._        

‘Do you think you’re ready for the Nebelhorn, then?’

‘We’ve had months in between the competitions,’ said Yuuri. ‘We have more experience. We should be fine.’

‘That sounds like modesty to me,’ Viola said, humour colouring her tone. ‘Would you say that’s a correct estimation, Viktor and Sascha?’

‘I’d say so,’ said Viktor warmly, wrapping around the back of Yuuri’s chair. ‘And you know Yuuri. Modesty suits him quite well, I think.’ The words went unsaid: _Look at how beautifully he flushes._

Yuuri bit the inside of his cheek, and breathed in deeply, when Viola picked another question from her Dawie-approved list.    

‘You haven’t found it difficult, training together and yet acting as competitors?’

Viktor frowned for a moment, considering. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. When he looked at Sascha, she was shaking her head too. ‘It hasn’t been about competing against each other. That isn’t what this is.’

‘What is it then?’ Viola prompted.

It would have been easy, then, to tell her everything—to tell her the truth. It was simmering beneath the surface, begging for a release. Lies did not sit easily on Yuuri’s tongue, no matter that they weren’t lying, or that he hadn’t told any, or that Viktor told him, a hand rubbing at the back of Yuuri’s neck as guilt gnawed at him, that some things just had to remain unspoken.

‘It’s a challenge,’ Viktor told the reporter. ‘It’s—seeing how far we can get. It’s wanting more than what we’ve done and seeing if it’s possible. It’s having no avenue closed off from us.’ His fingers trailed at Yuuri’s nape, where his hand rested on the back of Yuuri’s chair. ‘If nothing else, we have our best friends by our sides, spurring us on.’

‘You’re saying you’re doing this for fun?’

Sascha shook her head. ‘That’s not the right word,’ she told her, admonishing. ‘Why does _any_ skater go onto the ice?’

Viola just stared at her, and Sascha was looking back with a helplessness, a tightness at the corner of her eyes, willing Viola to understand.

‘It’s because we want to _feel_ something,’ she told them. ‘Desperately, we want to feel something. And we’re stepping onto a surface that makes us feel alive as we speak to it, and we’re—we’re just hoping it speaks back.’

‘And knowing,’ said Hatsuyo, ‘even so, that it won’t.’

‘So it’s futile?’ said Viola. ‘All you work for? Everything that’s come out of this? The problems you’ve faced from Chenkov, and—from elsewhere?’

 _Elsewhere,_ she said, meaning everyone that wouldn’t approve of the new ring, the small diamond glinting on Yuuri’s finger. _It’s meant to be seen._

‘That’s the beauty of it,’ Yuuri murmured. He glanced up at her, feeling the warmth of Viktor’s palm, a centre, keeping him in orbit. ‘None of that matters. It doesn’t matter how much you put in and don’t get out. It doesn’t _matter_ what anyone else thinks of you—of how you live a life that doesn’t affect them. You just . . . do it all anyway.’

‘And let the consequences be damned?’

Yuuri felt Viktor’s touch, felt Hatsuyo steady now at his side. Knew Sascha was watching and taking this all in. His smile, on camera, would be modest and reserved—and proper. It felt feral in his mouth.

He said, ‘What consequences?’  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ****
> 
> Please click 'kudos' if you enjoyed!
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr!](http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com)
> 
>  **Note:** I think a small disclaimer is probably necessary here re: the proposal. I was super intrigued by the fandom response to the engagement in Episode 10 of YOI. And yes, I took that as an engagement, and I understood the Japanese reaction of 'How can people say this isn't what we can see it is?' But I also understood the Western reaction, ie. that a proposal hadn't been given, and that skating and coaching had been used as a layer or a conduit for their relationship to be portrayed. Skating was the surface level of their relationship. 
> 
> But I liked the idea, here, that they both knew it was an engagement, and yet Viktor wanted to do everything in its most explicit sense. Because, so far, when we think about the banquet scene and how Viktor was living for what, 9 months? Thinking that he was on the same level as Yuuri? And then to realise that actually he wasn't? The proposal is his way here of being like, 'Okay but can I just check that we both know where we stand?' which is as funny as it is ridiculous as it is _Viktor_.


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